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THE LITTLE CORNER 
NEVER CONQUERED 

The Story of the American Red Cross 
War Work for Belgium 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



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The Story of the American Red Cross 
War Work for Belgium 



By 

John van Schaick, Jr. 

Formerly Lieutenant Colonel U. S. Army (Assimilated Rank) 

Formerly Commissioner to Belgium 

A. R. C. 



T&tm fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1922 

All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 







Copyright, 1922, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and printed. Published May, 1922. 



FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



MM 2* 1922 
©CI.A674245 



I dedicate this book to my wife, 
who went with me to Europe in 
1915 for work with the Rocke- 
feller Foundation War Relief 
Commission and again in 1917 
for work with the American 
Red Cross. 



PREFACE 

Before I left Brussels in April, 1919, I agreed to write 
the story of the American Bed Cross work for Belgium. 

Other things prevented until March, 1921, when I got 
at it. 

The lapse of time has been fortunate, as I am convinced 
that we are past the period when "people do not want to 
hear anything more about the war." 

There are some indications of the beginning of a period 
bound to come when every detail of that stupendous 
struggle will be read with a deepening interest and a 
truer perspective. 

The Commission for Belgium of the American Red 
Cross was small in comparison with many other Red Cross 
Commissions. It operated on somewhat different lines. 
It handled less than five million of the four hundred 
million dollars raised by the American people through 
the American Red Cross for war relief. 

But this Commission was set down in one of the most 
dramatic and picturesque sections of Europe, where a brave 
people and a heroic King made a last stand to save their 
country, and where powerful armies of England and rep 
resentative divisions of France and the United States 
fought through to a glorious end. 

This book tells something of the story of war in Flanders, 
of life in that part of France which supported Flanders, 
and of the work of the American Red Cross in helping 
Belgian hospitals, cheering Belgian soldiers, saving Bel- 
gian children, and lifting the load of misery which settled 
down on both refugees and those who refused to fly. 

I am putting the foreign agencies we used in the fore- 
front of the story, because the policy of our Commissioner 



PREFACE 

was to "put responsibility squarely up to the Belgians for 
their own job, and to hold ourselves to guiding, cheering 
and helping with the resources of the United States." 

ISTo ordinary words are adequate to express the deep 
respect and abiding admiration which I feel for the 
American men and women who worked with our British, 
French and Belgian colleagues in these great tasks. 

The Americans showed courage, skill and sense. They 
promoted understanding and good will between different 
nations and races. 

Because the toil was mainly their toil and the leader- 
ship mainly that of our first Commissioner, I feel free 
to say frankly that the work was work in which the Ameri- 
can people will take increasing pride as they find out more 
about it, and that it will stand the test of the most rigid 
investigation. 

In the Library of Congress and the National Head- 
quarters of the American Bed Cross in Washington, I 
have found constant help, without which I could not have 
done this work. Especially I am indebted to Mr. George 
B. Chadwick and to Mrs. M. S. Fergusson, of the Amer- 
ican Red Cross, for valuable suggestions. 

John van Schaick, Jr. 
Washington, D. C, 
July 17, 1921. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
Red Cross Officers at Bruges .... Frontispiece 

Facing 
Page 

The King and Queen of the Belgians with Prince 
Leopold at Red Cross Headquarters, Washington, 

October 29, 1919 38 

Dr. Antoine Depage . 62 

Col. Ernest P. Bicknell 62 

Refugee Mothers Who Made Munitions .... 94 

Madame Rolin Hymans Coming Out of the Abri . . 112 
A Belgian Munition Worker at Le Havre . . . .142 
In the American Red Cross Creche for Belgian Babies at 

Graville, France 180 

In a Home for War Orphans in Brussels .... 224 



CONTENTS 

Chapter 

I The First Commission to Europe 

The Government at Le Havre 

III The Battle of the Yser 

IV "The Little Corner Never Conquered 

V The Spectacle of War in Flanders 

VI The King and the Queen 

VII The Headquarters Organization 

VIII Getting Started in Flanders 

IX The Hospital of the Queen 

X Belgian Red Cross Activities 

XI Belgian Army Hospitals 

XII The Refugee Problem 

XIII Refugees in Flight 

XIV Refugees in Exile 

XV The Children's Colonies 

XVI Stories about Children 

XVII The Children's Own Stories 

XVIII The Works of Her Majesty, the Queen 

XIX For Those Who Held the Line 

XX What Civil Hospitals Did 
Quaker Foundations for Our Work 
Quakers in Action at the Front 
Dr. Park's Great Experiment 

XXIV Against Tuberculosis 

XXV For the Mutiles 

XXVI Some Great Days Toward the End 

XXVII The King Comes Home 

XXVIII With Those Who Stayed under the 

Germans 

XXIX The Reopening of the Universities 

XXX Cardinal Mercier 

XXXI A Great Ambassador 

XXXII The Americans Come to Flanders 

XXXIII Closing Up 
Appendix 



Page 
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38 

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54 

62 

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81 

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93 

102 

113 

124 

135 

140 

151 

157 

165 

177 

184 

192 

199 

211 

217 
228 
232 
235 
241 
246 
249 



THE LITTLE CORNER 
NEVER CONQUERED 

The Story of the American Red Cross 
War Work for Belgium 



THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER 
CONQUERED 

CHAPTER I 

The First Commission to Europe 

WITH the approval of the United States Government, 
the War Council of the American Red Cross sent 
a Commission to Europe in June, 1917. 

The head of the Commission was Grayson M. P. 
Murphy, a graduate of West Point, and a successful ISTew 
York banker, who had shortly before been commissioned as 
Major in the United States Reserve Corps and placed on 
General Pershing's staff. He had a record for getting 
things done quickly in the business world and for making 
men like him. In war time there is need of getting things 
done quickly in the relief field, and of making men pull 
together. The choice of Major Murphy, therefore, was 
a happy one. 

For the beginning of the Commission to Belgium, we 
must go back to the S. S. La Touraine of the Compagnie 
Generate Transatlantique on which the Commission sailed 
June 2, 1917. On board the project of relief work in 
Belgium was talked over and plans were made. 

The War Council had defined a great task and then 
sent a Commission untrammeled by specific directions. 
"We are now in the war," they had said in substance. 
"It will be a year at least before the Government can 
strike a blow which will count in a military way. Mean- 
while, in every other way possible, it is necessary for us to 
cheer our Allies, help their armies and civilian populations. 

1 



2 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

and prevent an adverse decision before we get there in 
force. The job of the American Red Cross- is to get to 
Europe as fast as possible, establish relations with every 
Allied government, express American sympathy and good 
will, help lift the burden of war misery and, by sympathy 
and help, keep up morale." 

The subsequent history of the Allies and Von Luden- 
dorfPs Memoirs furnish eloquent testimony as to the 
decisive part played by morale. 

The conferences on shipboard made us acquainted with 
one another and with what we had in hand. Among 
those who sailed with us, not yet of our party, was the 
late beloved Ralph Preston. He had been in Paris since 
the outbreak of the war, had helped organize the American 
Relief Clearing House for French and Belgians, and 
now was quietly but effectively working to have the 
American Red Cross start by taking over the offices, staff 
and good will of this organization. 

There were also Leeds and Scattergood, American 
Friends, destined to organize one of the most useful units 
affiliated with us in war relief work. 

Among the members of our Commission was Ernest P. 
Bicknell, former National Director of the American Red 
Cross, who had been abroad the first year of the war as 
Director of the Rockefeller Foundation War Relief Com- 
mission. In one of the conferences on shipboard, Mr. 
Bicknell described his experiences with this Commission 
in 1914 and 1915, when he had visited England, Holland, 
Germany, Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Switzer- 
land, France, Italy and Belgium. He said that the first 
step taken by the American Red Cross in a disaster in any 
American city was to get into touch with the local authori- 
ties, Mayor and Common Council, and the local relief 
agencies, and to cooperate with them, so that in every 
disaster the relief agencies might be united. He said that 
the same principle underlay all successful relief work any- 
where, and that our policy should be to work with gov- 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 3 

ernments of the respective countries and to use existing 
relief agencies where we could. 

Another thing Bicknell said to us as we walked the deck 
put the whole project in a nutshell: 

"Every relief job has three sides. If you fail in any of 
them your whole job will be a failure: (1) Purchase of 
supplies, (2) Transportation, and (3) Distribution." 

In other words, "You have to get your wheat, carry it, 
and distribute it." 

"Each one of these phases of the job calls for an organi- 
zation highly specialized. Eor the first you need people 
who can raise money, and go into the markets and spend it 
wisely. For the second you need trained transportation 
men and the cooperation of armies and governments. Eor 
the third you need men of unusual balance, speed, cour- 
age and tact to help people without harming and without 
offending." 

Every day Major Murphy said either to a group or to 
individual members of the party: "We are relief forces 
and not combat forces, but the first duty of the American 
Red Cross is to help win the war. We have to remember 
that these people over there are very tired and very sensi- 
tive. I want you to pocket your pride and not get into 
arguments. 

"If a Red Cross man is high and mighty with a single 
hotel waiter, he will hurt the whole Red Cross. 

"Remember that these people who have been doing 
relief work in Europe since the beginning of the war 
know a lot more about it than we do. Play the game 
with them. 

"Any man who can't handle himself in French in three 
months enough to do business will be considered an un- 
desirable member of this party. 

"Any man who tries to pull off star plays at the expense 
of team work will soon draw his release. 

"I don't know a thing about it. I've got to depend on 
you fellows to put it over." 



4 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

The members of the party in addition to those men- 
tioned were as follows: James H. Perkins, afterward 
Commissioner to France and Commissioner to Europe; 
William Endicott, afterward Commissioner to Great 
Britain; Reverend Robert Davis, long afterward Com- 
missioner to Austria; John van Schaick, Jr., afterward 
Commissioner to Belgium ; Carl Taylor, afterward Com- 
missioner to various countries ; Reverend E. D. Miei; C. G. 
Osborne ; R. J. Daly ; A. Wl Copp ; Thomas H. Kenny ; 
Paul Rainey; Frederick Hoppin; Frederick Hoffman; 
Ernest McCullough; F. R. King; and Philip Goodwin. 

Mrs. John van Schaick, Jr., was permitted to go on 
condition that it should not be official, but once on ship- 
board, Major Murphy saw that her knowledge of French 
and long experience abroad would be of value, and set her 
to work at once. 

So we went to Europe, with gymnastics every morning, 
French classes all over the ship, and hourly conferences 
about the big job ahead of us. 

We learned for the first time by wireless that General 
Pershing was en route at the same time, headed for 
England, and heard that we were to be militarized and 
made a part of the American Expeditionary Forces. 

Bicknell and I were given the Department of Social 
and Economic Conditions, he of course as chief and I as 
assistant chief. We were set to work to study and plan. 

We went down along the Marne and saw the relief and 
reconstruction work of the English Quakers "War Vic- 
tims Relief Committee." 

A number of times we went up into the Somme and 
Aisne around N"oyon, Ham, Nesle and Roye, and studied 
the section which had been evacuated by the Germans the 
preceding March, and which the Germans called the evac- 
uated region, the French the reconquered region, and the 
Americans the devastated region. 

We saw towns near the old trenches, unavoidably de- 
stroyed by shell tire, and places like Chauny knocked 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 5 

down deliberately by the Germans with the battering ram, 
or explosives on the eve of their retirement. 

We went up into the British Zone to Calais, Boulogne, 
St. Omer, Amiens, Perorme, Bapanme and Bray. 

We motored to Le Havre to visit the Belgian Govern- 
ment and to La Panne to visit the Belgian front. 

With all the destruction, we saw something of the relief 
work undertaken by the French and Belgian Govern- 
ments, and of innumerable private committees. There 
were English committees for the French, for the Bel- 
gians, and for the French and Belgians combined. There 
were French committees working simply for the French, 
and Belgian committees working for the Belgians, and 
committees of both working for both. There were also 
many American organizations and many Americans asso- 
ciated with French organizations. 

We discovered, of course, rivalry between different 
organizations and something of a frantic desire on the 
part of French military officials to get some of these relief 
people off their backs. 

We were, however, cordially welcomed as representa- 
tives of the American Red Cross, and again and again 
asked to help promote cooperation among the many indi- 
viduals and committees at work and anxious to work. 

Meanwhile, in the Paris office of the American Red 
Cross, C. G. Osborne, of Chicago, had organized trans- 
portation; Carl Taylor, buying; and Smith, of the Paris 
Branch of the Guaranty Trust Company, accounting. 
These three departments, from the very beginning, were 
given to understand that they were not only to serve 
France but every other allied country as they had op- 
portunity. 

In these early days the entire Commission could meet 
in one room, and everybody helped and advised everybody 
else. 

Every ship coming into Bordeaux brought new arrivals 
for the Red Cross work. Of those coming that first sum- 



6 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

mer, Homer Folks and Livingston Farrand were to play 
very important parts in European relief. Mr. Folks took 
over Civil Affairs of the Commission for France, and Dr. 
Farrand organized the Commission for the Prevention of 
Tuberculosis in France, of the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Dr. Farrand, however, from the beginning was a co- 
operating force in all the affairs of the Red Cross. He 
took offices with us and gave up Folks, who had come for 
Tuberculosis work with him, to our organization. 

For organizing ability and all that makes great execu- 
tives in the field of relief, Folks and Farrand made rec- 
ords unsurpassed. 

The American Relief Clearing House, whose work 
we had taken over, had for some time sent supplies of 
food and clothing to individuals and committees dealing 
with Belgian refugees, and medical supplies to Belgian 
hospitals. 

As we went on with our study in France, the Belgian 
problem began to emerge as a separate thing. Mr. Bick- 
nell and I were somewhat familiar with the Belgian situa- 
tion on the other side of the fighting lines. Over that im- 
passable barrier lay the greater part of the little country 
and by far the greater number of the people. Both of us 
had cooperated more or less the first two years of the war 
in the work of Herbert Hoover, head of the Commission 
for Relief in Belgium. We knew Occupied Belgium 
with its seven and a half millions of people; its German 
guards at every turn; its masses of German troops in 
garrison and on the march; and its Comite National, 
made up of the best blood of little Belgium, working in the 
last and least little hamlet to feed and clothe the people. 
For us now, Occupied Belgium was something like Ger- 
many itself, shut in by an iron wall and known only 
vaguely through rumor, surmise, the isolated experiences 
of people who escaped, or the rare visits of Belgians who 
came out on mission. 

But on our journeys that summer we discovered an- 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 7 

other Belgium, "Belgique Libre" standing in mighty- 
contrast to "Belgique Occupee." It was made up of two 
hundred and fifty thousand Belgian refugees in France; 
one hundred and eighty thousand in England ; thirty thou- 
sand in (Switzerland; eighty thousand in Holland; the 
Belgian Civil Government, which had been given asylum 
by the French at Ste. Adresse, Le Havre (Seine 
Inferieure) ; the King and Queen at La Panne; and the 
Belgian Army in their trenches on the Yser. 

Installed in the Red Cross offices in Paris that first 
summer was a very intelligent old French gentleman, the 
Count de Moreuil, a friend of H. O. Beatty, Director 
General of the American Red Cross at that time, who 
tried, kindly and tactfully, to guide our first steps in a 
new country. Under date of August 9, he dictated a 
memorandum for the Department of Social and Economic 
Conditions, calling attention to the colonies of Belgian 
children in the Seine Inferieure, stating that on account 
of recent military operations in Flanders many hundred 
new evacues had been received, and that thousands more 
might come. He said that we should make ourselves fa- 
miliar with the situation. 

Immediately, Mr. Bicknell made arrangements to go to 
visit M. Berryer, the Belgian Minister of the Interior at 
Le Havre, and to study this situation at first hand. He 
knew what the rest of us discovered, that the way to get 
a, clear vision was to go and see in person. No matter 
what imagination a man has, in the midst of a great war, 
the responsible executive authorities must be field men at 
least part of the time, if their judgment is to count for 
anything. 

Mr. Bicknell, however, was held in Paris by other 
work and sent me on this first Belgian visit. I took with 
me Edward Eyre Hunt, for a long time of the Commis- 
sion for Relief in Belgium, who had just come for work 
abroad with the Red Cross. 

Out of Paris by the long Champs Elysees past St. Ger- 



8 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

main en Laye, then down the lovely winding valley of 
the Seine, a fast automobile reaches Rouen, seventy-five 
miles away, in between two and three hours, and the 
great port, Le Havre, fifty miles farther on, in two 
hours more. 

But before Rouen is reached, there must be crossed the 
boundaries of ancient Normandy, part of which is in the 
modern French department, the Seine Inferieure. Here 
we found hundreds of Belgian children taken from the 
front by the Belgian Government. Three thousand we 
found had been put in colonies of from fifty to two hun- 
dred around Paris, and three thousand more in the Seine 
Inferieure and up along the coast between Le Havre 
and Calais. 

At Yvetot, half way between Le Havre and Rouen, the 
Belgian Government had stationed a Commissioner, Mr. 
Olbrecht, in general charge. On Sunday, August 12, 
he took us to visit the colonies at Yvetot, Caudebec, Saus- 
say, Malaise and Ouville l'Abbaye. The children were 
all well clothed, apparently well nourished and were cared 
for by nuns of different religious orders, with a priest 
here and there as a teacher or chaplain for a group of 
colonies. We discovered that they had their hard prob- 
lems, one of which was the difficulty of obtaining milk for 
younger children. Cows were selling around nine hun- 
dred francs and before a year, got up to fifteen and sixteen 
hundred francs. 

Another serious thing was lack of clothing and cloth 
for clothing. At St. Hlery, Olbrecht said they were trying 
to teach boys the fundamental principles of agriculture, 
gardening and care of stock. They needed chickens, cows, 
sheep, pigs and four draft horses. They wanted to raise 
for themselves what they ate and to furnish other colonies. 

The food situation in general was better in the Seine 
Inferieure than around Paris and in less fertile parts of 
France. It was a country of orchards and grain fields, of 
gardens and pastures. We saw many French departments 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 9 

in the ensuing months but nowhere did the country people 
bring in as much garden stuff as here. But here, as 
everywhere in the world, in peace or war, equalizing of 
supply depended upon transport, and transport was stag- 
gering under the burden of war. 

These colonies were supported in two ways : 

(1) By grant of the French Government; 

(2) By funds of the Belgian Minister of the Interior. 
The grant of the French Government was a grant made to 
all refugees driven from their homes by the movement of 
armies. It consisted of francs, 1.25 per day for adults 
and 50 centimes for children. With characteristic sen- 
erosity the French Government extended the benefit of the 
law to Belgians on the same terms as to their own people. 

The funds of the Minister of the Interior were not 
funds of the government but funds contributed by relief 
committees all over the world, but principally in Eng- 
land, for use of Belgian refugees. 

That first Sunday of the distinctively Belgian work, we 
got into touch by long distance telephone with this Min- 
ister, M. Berry er, and arranged to meet him at the tem- 
porary Belgian capitol, Ste. Adresse, Le Havre. 

We met three people at Le Havre on this first trip 
destined to be closely associated with our work: M. 
Berryer, Brand Whitlock and Madame Henry Carton de 
Wiart. M. Berryer, a lawyer of Liege, is a member of 
the Catholic party, a man of independent means and 
rather broad views. He told us that he needed our help, 
that the war had gone on and his funds were running 
down and he must not get entirely without money. He 
said the Belgian Government was living on borrowed 
money and he could not turn to the public treasury; that 
he had the responsibility for all the refugees, all the sick, 
infirm old people whether refugees or not, and all the 
children still at the front and in his colonies. He told 
us that the recent attack of the British with the counter 
battery work of the Germans had forced the evacuation 



10 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

of many additional children, and that he might at any 
time have all the people left in Free Belgium as refugees 
on his hands. 

With Mr. Brand Whitlock we began that day an as- 
sociation which lasted all through the war, in which he 
placed himself and all his experience freely at our serv- 
ice. Of this great American we shall write hereafter. 

Madame Henry Carton de Wiart, wife of the Belgian 
Minister of Justice, had just been released from a German 
prison and sent around through Switzerland to rejoin her 
husband at Le Havre. In a beautiful chateau at Harfleur, 
outside Le Havre, under huge trees, surrounded by lovely 
flowers, with happy children, she talked of things hard 
to visualize in these surroundings: life under the iron 
German rule in Brussels, the spying and watching and 
waiting ; the arrest, the trial and the months in Germany. 
In their fiercest moments the Germans never terrorized 
this bright-faced, keen-witted, charming, resourceful lady. 
Both she and Whitlock told us we were needed to help the 
Belgians. 

M. Berryer insisted, after a brief interview with us, 
that we go to the front and see for ourselves. He got the 
frontier post at Ghyvelde, two hundred miles away, on the 
telephone, and arranged for us to pass the frontier line 
between France and Belgium without passes. 

With little time at our disposal we pushed off late in 
the day on the two-hundred-mile trip from Le Havre to 
the Belgian front, following the coast up through Dieppe, 
Eu, Abbeville, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Boulogne-sur-Mer, 
Calais and Dunkirk to La Panne, where we arrived in 
the afternoon of the next day. In my diary of August 
fourteenth, I wrote : 

"It is always a significant thing to pass a frontier, but 
in war time it is a line of destiny for thousands. It was 
a great experience today to cross the frontier and to be 
tonight on the water front surrounded by every conceivable 
spectacle of war, tens of thousands of English troops, and 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 11 

to realize that it is Belgium, the little strip ten miles 
wide and thirty miles long, to which Albert and his troops 
have clung — with the German lines only six miles away; 
Ostend, where we used to cross the channel, just up the 
coast; Looten Hulle, where we used to visit our friends, 
the Hulins, only thirty miles from here, but under the 
Germans." 

Our business was to study the half destroyed villages 
back of the Belgian and British Armies, in which civilians 
were still living. We were conducted by M. Jean Stey- 
aert, destined also to be one of our closest associates until 
the end of the war. M. Steyaert was Commissaire d'Ar- 
rondissement de Fumes-Dixmude, a position which corre- 
sponds to Sous-Prefet in France. 

Belgium in peace time is divided into nine provinces, 
each of which has a Governor appointed by the Minister 
of the Interior. Under each Governor are Commissaires, 
and under the Commissaires, burgomasters of towns and 
cities. All that was left of Belgium was part of the 
province of West Flanders, under Governor Janssens van 
Bisthoven. Under the Governor in 1917 were M. Stey- 
aret and M. Biebuyck, the Commissaire of Ypres. 

On August fifteenth I forwarded a report to Red 
Cross headquarters, saying in substance this : 

"La Panne, August 15, 1917. 

"I arrived here last night from Dunkirk and am leaving 
for Paris late today. 

"I came up because at Le Havre the Minister of the 
Interior said that there were fifty thousand people who 
might have to be evacuated at once and because he was 
most anxious to have Bed Cross help. 

"I have seen the villages where conditions are especially 
dangerous today, Alveringhem, Coxyde and Furnes, with 
the Commissaire d' Arrondissement, M. Jean Steyaert. 
In all three places there are left five thousand civilians of 
which twelve hundred are children. Alveringhem is eight 



12 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

kilometers, Coxyde ten kilometers and Furnes ten and a 
half kilometers from the lines. All are shelled more or 
less and all exposed to gas attack. In Alveringhem the 
people have moved out on the dunes as it is considered 
safer. 

"In Coxyde they live in the village. In Furnes they go 
out and pass the nights on the farms around about, and 
also in little shanties they have erected. 

"If La Panne should have to be evacuated there would 
be four or five thousand people to be evacuated out of a 
total civil population of eleven thousand. The others, the 
Commissaire says, would not go unless things were very 
bad, and then they would go by themselves. 

"Here is an important thing. The babies are still back 
of the lines. ]STo children under three are evacuated. 
They take them now from three to fifteen years of age. 
But they want to hire another farm, put up some barracks 
and evacuate fifty babies at once. 

"As for work in the rear around Le Havre and Rouen, 
I am convinced that it is well done. 

"It is under Catholic sisters. In fact practically all the 
people are Catholics and the sisters are a fine lot. 

"I am convinced that the Minister of the Interior 
handles the thing well. His man at Yvetot is a barrister 
and very able. Madame Henry Carton de Wiart repre- 
sents the Minister and has exceptional ability also. The 
Sous-Prefet (French) at Abbeville, who has taken charge 
at Cayeux and Nouveau Brighton, has had long experience 
in this kind of work." 

On August 17, 1917, supplementing this report, I rec- 
ommended to Mr. Bicknell that we help start a baby farm 
colony near the front, put up two new colonies for children 
farther down the coast, establish a warehouse at Dunkirk 
or some other point well forward, and assemble emergency 
supplies. I suggested also that we put some games and 
toys in the colonies of Normandy. 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 13 

That modest request for toys has often been referred 
to as the only request which the War Council in Wash- 
ington refused to grant the Commission to Europe. It 
was believed that spending money for toys for famine 
stricken Europe would be misunderstood in the United 
States. The War Council, however, suggested another 
way and we got the money from another source. 

On August 16, Major Murphy went to La Panne to see 
the King and Queen of the Belgians. He came back by 
Le Havre and conferred with the Ministers of the Belgian 
Government. 

Major Murphy always moved with great speed. Under 
date of August 6 I had set down in my diary an im- 
pression of Major Murphy I never had to change: 

"The wheels are turning fast. Murphy is putting drive 
into it. I am more cheered about the way the thing is 
going than I have been at any time. Some of our unofficial 
advisors, who, in themselves, are lovable fellows, take 
the attitude, 'Oh, that is very dangerous. We must be 
careful. The government must be handled right. The 
French nature is very peculiar.' Murphy's attitude is 
'Damn the torpedoes. We have got to move.' " 

On August 20 he directed that a department for Bel- 
gium be immediately organized with Mr. Bicknell as 
chief and with me as assistant chief — that we make our 
headquarters at Le Havre, and cooperate closely with 
the Belgian Government. He said emphatically to us: 
"I do not want you to attempt to build up great specialized 
services like transportation, accounting and purchase, but 
depend on Paris. We are getting over the best men in 
the United States to run these departments and we want 
to put them at the service of the Red Cross organizations 
throughout Europe." 

Major Murphy said later, "I organized a department 
for Belgium and soon turned it into an independent Com- 
mission to Belgium for three reasons : First, I thought it 
a better way to do business, that it would spur up the 



14 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

men on the separate commissions and give them more 
pride in their work. Second, I knew that it would please 
the different countries to have Commissions of their own 
and not deal simply with Paris. Third, I knew that de- 
centralization was necessary with a thing as big as our 
work." 

Three days after our appointment, two of the Belgian 
Ministers appeared upon Major Murphy's invitation for 
a conference with us: Vandevyvere, Minister of Finance, 
and Berry er, Minister of the Interior. Vandevyvere 
spoke almost faultless English. He had been several times 
in the United States and liked Americans. He acted in 
this interview as interpreter for Berryer, under whose 
department all of our civil work for Belgians would have 
to be done. Only three things were accomplished at this 
first interview, but they were vital. One was the begin- 
ning of an acquaintance and friendship with the heads of 
the Belgian Government. The second was an agreement 
that all our work would be undertaken with the knowledge 
of the government. The third was the distinct acceptance 
on both sides of the principle that the responsibility for 
the job was Belgian, and the American part, one of as- 
sistance and cooperation. 

In the few remaining days in Paris we talked to every- 
body who knew Belgium. There was an American, Cap- 
tain Colby, son of Admiral Colby, U.S.N., who had come 
over early in the war with a volunteer ambulance unit for 
Belgium, and had become a Captain of Artillery in the 
Belgian Army. "Watch your step," said he, "don't get 
mixed up in their politics. Work as much as you can 
through the Queen." 

There was a former official of the American Relief 
Clearing House, who had helped Belgium. "Do what you 
can," said he, "for Belgium. Everybody praised them in 
the beginning. Everybody is beginning to damn them 
out now without rhyme or 'reason. It is not their fault 
that they can't go on and recapture their country. There 



THE FIRST COMMISSION TO EUROPE 15 

never was a region more terrible for soldiers than those 
lowlands of the Yser. See what has just happened to the 
British at Nieuport. Nor can the Belgians help it if the 
slum people of Antwerp make a bad impression as refugees 
in England. When all is said and done, the fact remains 
that they died by the thousands to stop Germany. They 
prevented a decision in her favor in 1914. They have 
fought our fight ever since." 

They were words casually spoken, but with great 
earnestness; and we found them words of discrimination 
and truth. 

Paris turned over to us one clerk, one automobile and 
one chauffeur in the last week of August. The chauffeur 
did not propose to get side-tracked with a little one-horse 
department, and struck. He flatly refused to go to Le 
Havre. Major Alexander Lambert dealt with his case 
for the transportation department and sent him back to 
New York. Not' being willing to wait for a chauffeur, I 
drove the car. In a white painted Ford, known as the 
Lambert Ford, with Bicknell and the baggage in the 
back seat, and with my wife, newly appointed as inter- 
preter and translator, seated beside me, the department 
for Belgium left Paris on Saturday, September 1, 1917, 
at exactly two-twenty P. M. with the cheers of some of 
the Red Cross pioneers ringing in our ears. 



CHAPTER II 

The Government at Le Havre 

'OMING from Paris by Yvetot, and reaching the top 
of the long hill above Harfleur, one gets a glorious 
view of the Seine, the port of Le Havre, and of the 
Atlantic Ocean beyond. 

A yellow dirigible was moving gracefully about over 
the water. Two hydroplanes were going out to sea and 
two others were coming in. In the foreground an English 
camp stretched away to the right as far as we could see. 
There was a great volume of shipping in the harbor and 
on the Seine. That much we could be sure of at a glance. 
The blue sea, the curving coast line, a bold headland, the 
miles of roofs and a golden sunlight over everything made 
our first view memorable. 

We went through Le Havre to Ste. Adresse, the tem- 
porary seat of the Belgian Government, a suburb to the 
northwest of the town, at the foot of the headland which 
guards the entrance to the harbor. Here Le Havre had 
tried to make another JNTice without the sun and warmth 
of the Riviera, and had named it l^ice-Havrais. But 
Dufayel, the promoter, had succeeded in building several 
hotels and many villas, and one huge office or apartment 
building on the steep ground sloping back from the har- 
bor. One little hotel had been perched high up on the 
rocks far enough around so that it overlooked the surf of 
the ocean itself. It was called the Hotellerie. Here the 
Belgian Ministers lived. Another larger hotel was built 
at the water's edge and named the Hotel des Re gates in 
honor of the frequent regattas of the yacht club. Here 
the Commission to Belgium installed itself. 

16 



THE GOVERNMENT AT LE HAVRE 17 

Before any man or society can do effective work in any 
field he must know: First, what is to be done in that 
field, and, Second, who are already at work. The great 
stupidity often of relief work is duplication or competi- 
tion. Our first great task therefore was to get acquainted. 

There are three political parties in Belgium — the Cath- 
olic party, called the Clerical by its opponents, the Liberal, 
and the Socialist. The Catholic party is the party of the 
church. The Liberal party opposes Catholic control in 
the State, especially control of schools and government 
grants to religious institutions. It also opposes the Social- 
ists in economic matters and is fully as much the party 
of property as the Catholic. Some Liberals are in the 
Catholic church but many of them have left all churches. 
A few are Protestant and a very few are Jews. The 
Socialists are against both other parties on economic 
questions. In spite of Catholic bitterness toward Social- 
ists, Socialists curiously enough sometimes feel themselves 
more in sympathy with the Catholic attitude of interest 
in the masses than in what they call the aristocratic ten- 
dencies of Liberals. 

When the war broke out, the Catholics had been in con- 
trol for over thirty years. The King, however, summoned 
all parties to the service of the country. In a memorable 
session of Parliament he called Vandervelde, the Socialist 
leader, to the Cabinet, and Vandervelde, amid deafening 
cheers, shouted, "I accept." Soon after, Liberals were 
also called in and the Cabinet became "a sacred union for 
the war." The men in the Cabinet with whom we came to 
work intimately were Berryer, the Minister of the In- 
terior, a Catholic; Vandervelde, Minister of Intendance, 
a Socialist ; and General De Ceuninck, Minister of War, a 
Liberal. 

The Belgian Government was situated at Le Havre, two 
hundred miles from the front, because there was no room 
for them any nearer. The first plan had been to give them 
Abbeville, a hundred miles north, but the British had 



18 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

needed Abbeville as a forward railroad base. Those of 
us who saw Abbeville "straffed" by aviators in 1918 and 
completely evacuated, were glad that the Belgian Gov- 
ernment had not been put there. Only two or three times 
was Le Havre visited by the German aviators. The trou- 
ble at Le Havre was congestion. The French city of ante 
bellum times had some one hundred and thirty thousand 
people ; Le Havre of war time had one hundred thousand 
more. Practically no new buildings were erected during 
the war. There were twenty thousand Belgian refugees to 
be crowded in somewhere. In addition, the port had been 
turned over to the British as a base, and docks and ware- 
houses were crowded with British supplies. Into this port 
there poured a steady line of British troops and out of it 
a steady stream of British wounded "bound for Blighty." 
Here also in 1918, as at Calais, St. Nazaire and Bordeaux, 
the Americans landed. French, Belgian and British hos- 
pitals found room where they could, and welfare workers 
of many kinds came here to meet the troops and help the 
wounded. 

Into the midst of these important French and British 
activities, Belgian organizations were set down. Out 
at Graville there were Belgian munition plants employing 
fifteen thousand people. Up on the hill above Ste. Adresse 
there was another huge plant making and repairing auto 
trucks and other supplies. Twenty thousand Belgian sol- 
diers were employed here and three thousand worked in 
the government departments. 

Only one department stayed at the front. Against the 
wishes of his colleagues, General De Ceuninck, who suc- 
ceeded Baron de Broqueville as Minister of War in 1917, 
established his headquarters in an old chateau just outside 
of Furnes, some six miles from the lines. His officers 
and clerks were in long wooden barracks behind the 
chateau. He was a brave old warrior who had commanded 
a division and he could not bear to be at the rear. As a 
result, however, of this insistence on living in the danger 



THE GOVERNMENT AT LE HAVRE 19 

zone, all his barracks were burned by German shells in 
1918 and very important records were destroyed. There 
are always malicious people to criticize those who work 
at the rear in war time. This destruction of Belgian war 
records emphasized, the importance of that courage which 
dares stay back when the best service demands it. 

Besides Berryer and Vandervelde, we found here at 
Le Havre, the Baron de Broqueville, President of the 
Council of Ministers, a Catholic and a man of great per- 
sonal charm. We knew him as the Minister who had 
stood up in the Chamber at Brussels at the beginning of 
the war, and in a speech of great power announced the 
fateful decision of the government to oppose the passage 
of German troops. We met also Poullet, Minister of 
Science and Arts, another Catholic, who was elected Presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Deputies in the reorganization 
after the armistice; Helleputte, Minister of Agriculture 
and Public Works, very firmly Catholic and Flemish, well 
versed in English, a man of very genial presence, espe- 
cially kind to us, but who was disliked above his party 
associates by Liberals and Socialists for his unbending 
political views. 

Paul Hymans, a Protestant, a great orator and interest- 
ing man, was the leader of the Liberal party in this Le 
Havre Cabinet. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
We, of course, had little to do with him officially. His 
wife, however, a cultured, intelligent and generous Jewess 
of Brussels, became one of our best agents and partners. 
Their home on the Cote was a charming center socially, 
Paul Hymans in 1920 became the first President of the 
League of Nations. 

Count Goblet d' Alviella, another Liberal, was Minis- 
tre d'Etat or Minister — without portfolio. He was an 
elderly man, a great scholar and a professor of compara- 
tive religions in the University of Brussels. He was the 
head of the Free Masons of Belgium and as such especially 
opposed to the rule of Catholics. Yet Count Goblet and 



20 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

M. Helleputte, the Catholic, were the two Presidents of 
the Comite Officiel Beige des Befugies, and always had 
courteous relations. We quickly came into friendly asso- 
ciation with the Goblets; the young Countess Helene 
Goblet we soon discovered to be one of the fairest and 
finest of characters and one of the most devoted of workers 
for her country. Her service to the British, French, 
Belgian and American armies through the British Y. M. 
C. A. was one of the fine spiritual contributions of the war. 

Jules Renkin, Minister of the Colonies, was regarded 
as a very able leader of the Catholic party. Earlier, like 
Henry Carton de Wiart, he had been called a Catholic- 
Democrat, but with the growth of democracy in the world, 
the party caught up with him near enough to insure his 
good standing and even his leadership. 

Madame Renkin, a charming lady, was at the head of 
a work for Belgian soldiers en repos. 

Henry Carton de Wiart was Minister of Justice in the 
government at Le Havre, retiring from the Cabinet upon 
the return to Brussels, to become Ambassador to Holland. 
Later he became President of the Council of Ministers, or 
Prime Minister. Courtly, polished, an orator, a writer 
of distinction, one always instinctively wanted to call him 
Count or Baron.* His wife makes a strong impression 
upon Americans. They first think of her as a member 
of the American Prison Association, a subscriber to the 
Survey, and as the woman who introduced the Juvenile 
Court into Belgium. Then they find her the mother of 
four lovely girls whose names all begin with "G" : Ghis- 
laine, Georgette, Gudule, Guillemette, — and of two boys, 
the older a veteran of the World War while still in his 
teens. As they come to know her they find her very 
devout, her religion finding expression in all kinds of 
charitable activities. In Belgium, when Germans were 
the stranded ones, the first weeks of the war, she worked 
for Germans. When Belgium went under the German 
yoke, she stayed and took up the burden of her poor coun- 
*Recently creatad Count. 



THE GOVERNMENT AT LE HAVRE 21 

trymen. In Le Havre she was at the head of the Vestiaire 
of the American Red Cross and agent of the Minister of 
the Interior for children's colonies. But between Brussels 
and Le Havre, she served a term in a German prison. 
She passed the weary months of confinement in translat- 
ing Whitlock's "Forty Years of It" into French. Whit- 
lock, in his "Belgium," has told the dramatic story of 
her battle of wit and will with the Germans. 

In those early days of getting acquainted, we often 
turned to Brand Whitlock for advice and sympathy. To 
his tea table, we took things obscure, and learned how 
much diplomats know which they can't publish. Of his 
help and friendship we shall speak hereafter. 

Vandevyvere, Minister of Finance, had visited the 
United States several times, was often in England, and 
had a point of view and experience which made him of 
great service to us. "What I do not want," said he, "is 
to have Belgium held up in England and in the United 
States as a nation of beggars. I am grateful for appeals 
made for us by organizations like the American Red Cross, 
but we have suffered too much already by the wild talk 
of both frenzied Belgians and frenzied Americans. We 
take help now gratefully because we have to, both through 
you and through Hoover. But once give us back our coun- 
try and help us get started, and we don't want any more 
talk about the poor Belgians. The relief must be cut 
off at the earliest possible moment." 

Segers, Minister of Railways, Hubert of Industry, and 
Liebaert and Cooreman, Ministers of State, completed 
the Havre Cabinet, — Cooreman becoming Prime Minister 
a little later and continuing to the end of the war. 

Nearly all the Belgian Ministers and the members of 
their families were engaged in some form of relief work 
for their unhappy countrymen. To walk between them 
all and tread on no toes, to do the wise thing and not 
have it appear partisan or sectarian, would have been 
difficult had it not been for two things. 



22 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

On their side, whatever their divisions, the Belgians 
wanted distress relieved and people saved, no matter what 
agency did it. 

On our side, we tried to know all that was knowable 
about the rivalries of persons and institutions and then to 
walk as if they did not exist. 

Underlying everything was the basic fact that these 
Belgians were likable human beings, no different in essen- 
tials from the people back home, and that we had a chief 
of our Belgian work who approached them with a dignity, 
a courtesy, and a good will which won their confidence and 
regard. 

It was a little government without a country. It was 
separated from the King by a long, tiresome, all-day motor 
ride. It had to submit to more or less dictation from the 
big Allies who loaned it money, — and every reference to it 
out of Germany was couched in terms of the greatest 
contempt. But around it swirled all the currents of the 
war maelstrom. To it came the rumors, the gossip, and 
the authentic news. At it were directed two or three of 
Germany's most important peace efforts. 

The Commission to Belgium of the American Red Cross 
was fortunate in establishing close relations with this 
government at Le Havre. 

The Ministers knew the facts about their army, their 
hospitals, and their people wherever they were situated. 
They were able to tell us in a few words what relief meas- 
ures had been undertaken, who were at w r ork, what were 
the most pressing needs and the possibilities of future 
distress. They were never too busy to advise and help. 
They straightened out quickly questions of "circulation" 
or free movement of our personnel with British, French 
or their own military authorities. Their cooperation con- 
tributed largely to the success of Red Cross work for 
Belgium. 



CHAPTER III 

The Battle of the Yser 

""^TOW," said the Germans to Brand Whitlock that 
-**^l tragic day in Brussels when Antwerp fell, "now 
watch us push the Belgian Government into the sea." It 
was not that the Germans cared so much to punish the 
Belgians, Whitlock says, but that their great objective was 
Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe and the other channel 
ports which were the very life of the allied cause. 

The "foolish, short-sighted Belgians" first of all had 
refused to drive a thrifty bargain and let the German 
armies through. . 

They had secondly at Liege put up a resistance which 
delayed the powerful forces destined to swing around and 
capture Paris. There would have been no battle of the 
Marne without Liege. 

Finally, at Antwerp, they had defended the forts, some 
in bad condition, and consumed still more of the precious 
German time ; they had disarranged the schedule until the 
High Command became both nervous and furious.* 

Then the King made a fateful decision to save his 
army from capture, extricated his forces, and gave up 
the place which every Belgian had regarded as a Gibraltar. 

On Friday, October 9, 1914, the Germans entered Ant- 
werp, and coming in to Whitlock's house in Brussels, 
one of the higher officers exclaimed with glee, "Now watch 
us push the Belgians into the sea." 

The battle of the Yser with that of Ypres and Arras 
which followed, all a part of what Joffre calls "The Battle 
for Flanders," had been reckoned throughout the war as 

* Belgium under the German Occupation. Whitlock. 

23 



24> THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

one of the decisive battles of the world. But only now are 
we beginning to get the story from the leaders : 

Field Marshal Viscomte French of Ypres, the Sir John 
French of 1914, in his book "1914" describes the "stakes 
for which we were playing." He asks how it would have 
fared with the British Empire if from the end of October, 
1914, up to the end of the war, the German right flank 
had been "established at Dieppe instead of at Nieuport." 
The enemy then would have had the whole of the depart- 
ment of the Pas de Calais, the ports of Dieppe, Boulogne, 
Calais and Dunkirk, submarines would have closed the 
channel to British trade, England would have been starved 
out or invaded, "the horrors of air raids would have been 
multiplied a hundred fold," and long range artillery would 
have made effective practice across the channel at the 
English coast. 

"The stakes for which we were playing," said he, "were 
nothing less than the safety, indeed, the very existence of 
the British Empire." 

General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General 
Staff at the time, in "General Headquarters, 1914-16 and 
Its Critical Decisions," says: 

"It seemed possible to bring the northern coast of 
France and therefore control of the English channel, into 
German hands. The prize to be won was worth the stake." 
It would make possible, "the drastic action against Eng- 
land and her sea traffic with submarines, aeroplanes and 
airships, which was being prepared as a reply to England's 
war of starvation." Each side was making desperate ef- 
forts to outflank the other. Success for either in the 
fall of 1914 might have meant speedy victory and the end 
of the war. 

King Albert and the Belgians who were to play so 
decisive a part in the battle, during that second week of 
October, were marching west and south. They were in 
desperate condition. "The first of all to fight," they had 
been at it against heavy odds for over six weeks and were 



THE BATTLE OF THE YSER 25 

about worn out. They had stood some terrible pounding, 
hoping daily for the Allies to come. Now they had lost 
nearly the whole country, but Foch for the French, and 
Sir John French for the English were sending urgent 
messages to them to save the coast. Where could they in 
their extremity make a stand against the new fresh 
armies constantly hurled at them? 

Some sixty miles west of Antwerp is the fashionable 
seaside resort, Ostend, and ten miles down the coast toward 
the French frontier from Ostend is the mouth of the Yser 
Eiver at Meuport. Behind the Yser is a low-lying, 
marshy country, cut by canals and waterways feeding 
the Yser, which itself is here a canal 65 feet wide. 

Like their forefathers in almost every century from 
Csesar down, in their hour of peril, the Belgians made for 
the swamps and got ready to call on the water for help. 
They took their stand on the Yser and there for two weeks 
from October 15 on, they fought a battle which saved 
civilization, led by a King who already seems like a figure 
of mythology. 

Said John Buchan in "Nelson's History of the War," 
"the forty miles between Lille and JSTieuport suddenly 
became the Thermopylae of the war." 

This was the gateway to the coast, closed by the French 
on the south, the British at Ypres and the Belgians on the 
Yser. The battles of La Bassee, Arras, Ypres and the 
Yser are all a part of one struggle. Llad the Germans 
won anywhere they would have won everywhere. 

What made the Belgian end of it so dramatic was that 
everybody knew the Belgians had lost men and equipment, 
were short of ammunition and food, and were inexpressi- 
bly weary. "Little can be expected of the Belgians," said 
more than one allied despatch. "Their morale is shattered 
by continual retreat." 

But they were men fighting for the last few square miles 
of their country. Only the King and Generals might 
know the great world issues. They knew that they were 



26 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

fighting for their homes. And they were a stiff-necked, 
stubborn, unyielding folk. 

From IsTieuport-Bains where it entered the sea, the 
Yser was the front line for eleven miles, to Dixmude, 
where it makes a great bend south and southwest to its 
source in France. 

Back of the Yser from one to one and a half miles 
and parallel all the way from Nieuport to Dixmude was 
a single track line of railway on a little embankment above 
the flatlands, which was destined to play a memorable part 
in the struggle. 

The Belgians held the Yser to Dixmude and eleven 
miles of more solid land from Dixmude to Boesinghe, 
near Ypres. Subsequently their line was shortened to 
153/2 miles by French and British reinforcements. There 
were crossings of the Yser at St. George near ISTieuport, at 
the Schoorbakke, Tervaete east of Pervyse, and at 
Dixmude. 

The Belgians had from 60,000 to 80,000 men, 48,000 
of whom were rifles. They had the help of 6,000 gallant 
French marines in Dixmude, two divisions of French terri- 
torials and another French division before the battle 
closed. 

The Germans in front of the Belgians numbered 150,- 
000 men — the army released by the fall of Antwerp and 
several new army corps under the Duke of Wurtemburg. 

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, brother-in-law to 
the Queen of the Belgians, was one of the German High 
Command in Flanders during this struggle. Practically 
all through the war his presence on their front added a pa- 
thetic and dramatic touch to the situation. 

For two weeks, Belgians and Germans were at close 
grips. The Germans coming down in force hurled the 
Belgians over the river and the Belgians fought their 
way back.* Violent attempts were made to capture Dix- 
mude — fifteen in one night, but Belgian artillery and 

*Nehon's History of the World War. 



THE BATTLE OF THE YSER 27 

French marines held it by an unending struggle. Not 
until November 10 did the Germans get into the town and 
1hen it was too late to do them any good. 

Down the shore road against Nieuport itself, they made 
one powerful massed attack but at the crisis they were 
heavily shelled from the sea. British ships had crossed 
and were taking a hand where the Germans had not 
dreamed they would run the risk. But among other 
vessels, the British had three Brazilian craft built in 
England for patrol work on the Amazon River. They 
drew only four feet, seven inches of water. Heavily 
armored and converted into a kind of monitor, they could 
operate on the dangerous shoals where submarines could 
not attack them. With other old warships to help, they 
annoyed the Germans for five or six miles inland.* 

It was, says Buchan, like the Battles of the Dunes two 
hundred and fifty years before when Cromwell's fleet 
came to the help of the French and shelled the Spaniards 
from the sea. 

In spite of all efforts, the battle seemed lost when the 
Germans at last fought their way over the Yser at the 
Schoorbakke and Tervaete, held their ground and kept 
crossing in force. But it was one thing to cross and an- 
other thing to spread out. There were dikes and canals 
everywhere, and then the railway bank, and Belgians be- 
hind everything. But the Germans were inexorable. For 
three days they slowly pushed on over the swampy ground. 
The men of Flanders however knew their waterways and 
the possibilities. There were no dykes to cut to let the 
ocean in but their faithful Yser was brimming full.* At 
the most critical hour they completed a dam at Nieuport. 
Suddenly the Germans found puddles where none had been 
before, then pools, then their artillery was deep in mud, 
and then they were floundering in a foot of water. The 
river was spilling it over on to them. Even then they 
made a last effort. Under the eyes of the Kaiser himself, 

*Nelson's History of the World War. 



28 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

picked volunteers charged through a foot of water and 
captured Kamscappelle and a point on the railroad bank 
for the second time. But they could not advance. Wet, 
cold, miserable, they held it for the night, but on October 
31 were driven out. 

Finally, all the sluices of the feeders of the Yser were 
opened, the waters rose fast, drowning some of the Ger- 
mans, and the battle was over. 

The Belgians had lost 14,000 men killed and wounded.* 
Their effective rifles were reduced to 32,000 men and 
half of the artillery was for the time put out of commission. 
But they had responded every time to the appeal of the 
King who begged for one day more — and another day 
more — through two horrible weeks. 

They had established the lines of Free Belgium as they 
were to stand throughout the war. They had saved "the 
little corner never conquered" in which we of the Ameri- 
can Red Cross were to see such stirring days and do so 
much of our work. 



*Commander in Chief Belgian Army on "The War of 1914," />. 85. 



CHAPTER IV 

"The Little Corner Never Conquered" 

URUsTGr the battle for Flanders two Commanders 
issued proclamations to their troops which have been 
preserved. 

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, brother-in-law of 
King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, on October 
26, 1914, promulgated an army order commending several 
German corps and brigades, thanking the troops and clos- 
ing with this appeal: "Soldiers, the eyes of the whole 
world are now directed upon you. You must not now lose 
your energy in the fight with our most hated foe, you 
must finally break his pride. He is already tired out. 
Already many officers and men have voluntarily surren- 
dered. But the greatest and most decisive battle still re- 
mains before you. You must sustain it even to the end. 
The enemy must be crushed. You will persevere, you 
will not let him escape your fangs. We must conquer, we 
will conquer, we shall conquer." 

On October 28, King Albert addressed a proclamation 
to his officers, noncommissioned officers, corporals and 
soldiers. "For more than two months you have fought 
with marvelous courage and rare energy. You have been 
unable to guard the country from an odious invasion ; but 
Belgium has not submitted, and the Belgian Army is not 
annihilated. 

"Thanks to the wise retreat from Antwerp, considerable 
forces remain intact. . . . Together the Allies will retake, 
step by step, the territory soiled by the occupation of a 
powerful enemy who had premeditated the war, and 
brought formidable resources against us. 

29 



30 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

"Soldiers! our towns have been burnt, our fields rav- 
aged, our hearths destroyed; mourning is universal in 
our dear country, which has been cruelly devastated by 
pitiless foes. Even greater misfortunes hang over our 
compatriots if you do not deliver them from infamous 
oppression. You have then an imperative duty which 
you will know how to perform when your leaders give the 
sign. 

"A great King of France once wrote this letter in the 
day of defeat: 'All is lost save honor.' You have clothed 
your unfortunate country with honor and today you must 
cause it to rise from its ashes. 

"Soldiers ! There remains for you more than the glory 
of conquest. You have to rescue the country with the aid 
of our noble Allies." 

There is a marked difference in the tone of the two 
proclamations. The one is the appeal to pride and hate; 
the other is the appeal for home and loved ones, native 
land and honor. The reconquest of the country was not 
to come for over four years but the proclamation of the 
King nerved the little army for a long and terrible ordeal 
in the mud and cold of Flanders. 

They already had gone through three terrible winters 
in the trenches when the American Red Cross came in the 
fall of 1917 to the little corner of Free Belgium never 
conquered by the Germans. 

What was there of it ? There were eight miles north- 
easterly along the coast of the North Sea from the fron- 
tier of France near Dunkirk up through La Panne, St. 
Idesblade, Coxyde, Oost Dunkerke to Nieuport-Bains on 
the Yser ; forty-five or fifty miles southeasterly in a great 
bend of front line trenches from Nieuport-Bains through 
Nieuport, Ramscappelle, Pervyse, Merkem, around Ypres 
and to a point on the frontier near Armentieres where the 
trenches left Flanders and entered French territory; 
thirty-one or two miles northerly back along the French 
frontier to the point of beginning. This long narrow strip 



. "THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED" 31 

of land was in most places eight to ten miles wide from 
the front line back to the French frontier. It narrowed 
to a width of a mile or two at the lower end and at times 
widened out over a vast destroyed ISTo-Man's-Land in front 
of Ypres to a total width at that point of perhaps 20 
miles. The area seldom got above 250 or 300 square miles 
and what was added to it by successful attack was not 
reckoned as much, for it was an abomination of desolation. 
All the towns mentioned except La Panne were of course 
destroyed by the time we arrived. Of this 250 square 
miles of Belgian territory, there were picturesque sand 
dunes along the coast, many of which were artillery posts ; 
trenches above ground at the front, destroyed country from 
2 miles to 10 miles back of it, and a rich, flat farming 
country in the rear, every foot of which was exposed to 
shell fire, but which in the main was unhurt except for 
an occasional shell hole, roofless farmhouse, dead peasant 
or cow. There were other Flemish villages like Houthem, 
the Belgian Great Headquarters, Leysele, Isenberge, Wul- 
veringhem, Yincken, Beveren, Hoogstade, Oostvleteren, 
Proven, Watou and Bousbrugge which were comparatively 
safe. 

There were places like Ypres, Kemmel, JSTeuve-Eglise, 
Ploeg Steert, Dickebusch, Vlamertinghe, entirely wiped 
out and then other places like Furnes, of which one-fourth 
of the houses were wiped out, one-fourth badly hurt, one- 
fourth slightly touched and one-fourth undamaged, so 
dangerous at times that it was entirely evacuated and at 
other times reasonably safe. 

In this little corner of West Flanders there were four 
armies operating in 1917, the British next the sea, the 
Belgians, the French, and then again a huge British 
Army around Ypres. The French forces were small and 
were soon after withdrawn except for some artillery near 
La Panne. The presence of the French, however, was one 
of the bits of color, and association with the officers one 
of the compensations for Flanders. General Kouquerol, 



32 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

head of the French Mission to the Belgian Army, and 
Colonel Bonhomme, commanding the guns in the dunes 
back of La Panne, and their staffs were brave, upstanding, 
interesting, helpful men. I remember Colonel Bonhomme 
as the kindly officer who took me to have a drill with my 
gas mask at the French gas mask station — a thing I had 
neglected to do until he insisted upon it. 

Back of the forces at the front, there stretched far into 
France the artillery, the reserves, the training camps, the 
hospitals, the aerodromes, and all services of supply. 
Where the Belgians could put a thing on their own soil 
they did so, and often took grave risks to stay in their 
own land. 

For example, the bakery near Adinkerke, which fur- 
nished a train load of bread every day for the trenches, 
was destroyed in 1918. As I have said, the Minister of 
War lost most of his offices and records at Fumes. Gen- 
eral Kucquoy had his children's colony at Boitshoucke 
shelled to pieces: the Ocean Hospital at La Panne was 
two or three times temporarily evacuated, and the Hopital 
Elisabeth at Poperinghe was permanently evacuated and 
destroyed, and so something or other was always either 
getting hit or just escaping. 

In among these great armies moving to and fro, there 
lived the civilian population which would not go away. 
Military commanders raged about it. Civil governments 
gave orders but generally the orders were revoked or not 
enforced. The peasants clung to the soil. It was the 
same with the Flemish or half Flemish population of 
northern France. They simply would not leave unless the 
Germans were at the doors. It was partly due, we must 
admit, to cupidity. They are a thrifty lot. They got 
high prices for all produce during the war. They made 
more money than they had ever made in their lives, even 
with the able-bodied men away. And their little homes 
and furniture and animals were dear to them. The old 
woman might have little more than a cow but she would 



"THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED" S3 

not leave her cow. But there was underlying it all a 
noble patriotism. In Belgium it meant going into an- 
other country. While thousands did go, other thousands 
whose homes were free, stayed, worked for the army, 
raised their crops, mended roads and performed all kinds 
of services. 

When the American Red Cross reached Free Belgium in 
the early fall of 19 IT, there were 90,000 civilians still 
there. 



CHAPTER V 

The Spectacle of War in Flanders 

OUR first morning at La Panne we were awakened by 
tlie rattle of machine guns, and jumping to the 
balcony of our hotel room overlooking the sea, we were 
just in time to see a German plane plunge into the sea. 
It made a terrific splash and then there was nothing to be 
seen but the Englishman hovering overhead. 

x\nother afternoon, coming into town, Bicknell ex- 
claimed suddenly, "There goes one" — and we saw a sec- 
ond German fall in narrowing spirals until he crashed 
into the canal not far away. 

"The Germans will want to take some revenge for this," 
said Bicknell, "and maybe send a few shells over." 
Within an hour the first one came with a terrific screech 
directly past the little villa and landed in the sand. It 
was just before sunset. Soldiers and civilians were walk- 
ing on the beach. Many were bathing. Such a scattering 
of people I never saw before. Then came another, exactly 
among them but nobody was hurt. One is safer on the 
sand than in a house. The area covered by the explosion 
in sand is small. The sand grips the jagged bits of metal 
and much of the force is lost. That night other shells fell 
near the hospital and Dr. Depage, whose guests we were, 
ordered everybody into shallow trenches on the beach, the 
wounded, nurses, doctors, orderlies and guests. 

While we lay there, the Germans went over to Dunkirk 
down the coast and the whole sky that way was lighted up 
with the explosion of the barrage of defense. 

This kind of thing was not uncommon, and unhappily 
almost always there were victims. 

34 



THE SPECTACLE OF WAR IN FLANDERS 35 

A bomb fell just outside our office — all our windows 
were smashed and two soldiers standing on the corner 
were blown to bits. 

A shell came into the hotel next door and riddled the 
top story. Another shell from the sea came into the hotel 
on the corner, entering just over the door, but it was a 
little fellow and did no great damage. 

We would be eating lunch sometimes and see shells fall 
on the beach. One Sunday, while at dinner, we saw a 
German submarine exchange shells with the coast — the 
whole thing a picturesque but a perfectly futile per- 
formance. 

Night after night the planes of the Allies went up and 
came down the coast, and night after night the Germans 
passed over on the way to and from Dunkirk, Calais, 
Boulogne, or England. Occasionally they had a bomb or 
two left over for La Panne, and now and then we would 
be counted worthy of a real visit. 

Some of the happenings were terribly tragic, but some 
were funny. One bomb hit a chicken house of a worthy 
citizen, destroyed his fowls, and a big piece of it flew 
into the open window of the bed chamber of this citizen 
asleep there and lodged under his bed without his even 
waking up. Such were some of the Flemish nerves. 

One shell fell among a score of little children playing 
in the yard at the villa of the Queen and did no harm as 
it failed to explode. Another which fell on the Bains 
Militaires or Military Baths gave us 60 victims of whom 
30 died. 

Troops were always marching in or marching out. 
When the English held La Panne and Nieuport in the fall 
of 1917, every morning one could see hundreds of mounted 
men riding their horses out belly deep into the sea. 

By day or night the great English monitors with their 
little patrols came drifting up and when they attacked 
the German lines, it was the heaviest firing of all. They 
often broke our windows. 



36 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

We had grandstand seats for the dramatic night attacks 
on Ostend and Zeebrugge, the most spectacular naval op- 
erations of the war, though we didn't know it at the time. 
We simply knew that there were terrific explosions, that 
the night was lighted up, and that a few people came out 
of their houses at La Panne to inquire sleepily what was 
taking place. 

On other nights German destroyers came out from 
Ostend and Zeebrugge and dashed down the coast, shelling 
as they went. The raids were futile as a rule and the 
shells that fell on La Panne were small and did little 
damage. But as spectacles, such raids also were mag- 
nificent. 

Belgian Ministers were always coming or departing. 
Other visitors from all over the world had to be enter- 
tained, many of whom we had to take to the trenches. 

Attached to some parties there was especial interest, 
like the Irish journalists coming to get material about 
what little Belgium was doing to spread it broadcast in 
Ireland. 

Sometimes by day we saw a sausage balloon over the 
trenches go up in smoke and the occupant, if lucky, come 
down in his parachute. 

At night there were always the Hares of the trenches 
and the flashes of the guns. 

Only a hair line separated life and death. We took 
visitors to the little hotel on the corner to lunch. A fine 
young Belgian aviator was sitting at the' next table with 
his brother. He finished first, strolled out, got into his 
plane and was off. 

Before we finished, Commandant Le Due cried, "See 
that fellow doing stunts." But. it was no stunt. Down 
he came, the same boy who finished his luncheon first, in 
a nose spin, faster and faster until he hit the sea. There 
was a great splash, wings of the plane floating an instant 
and all was gone. Nothing remained but men running 
wildly on the beach and the brother tugging desperately at 



THE SPECTACLE OF WAR IN FLANDERS 37 

a huge fishing boat which twenty men could not move 
from the sand. 

Down just back of Ypres and around Poperinghe, there 
were the last of the hopyards for which Flanders was 
famous. But the hopyards were screens for motor con- 
voys and aerodromes. While men, women and little chil- 
dren were hop picking, English battle planes were going 
up beside them and German shells were searching always 
for roads and dumps and quarters or whatever else was 
there. And very often the shells found the men, women 
and children making hay, or picking hops or gathering the 
great broad beans of Flanders. 

Everywhere on the beach, along the roads, in the hospi- 
tals, in the trenches, one met the King and Queen, those 
two who gave interest and thrill and glory to everything 
in Flanders. They might be with a visitor like King 
George of England, Poincare or Clemenceau of France, — 
or the King might be on a bicycle or walking away from 
a peasant's burning house — one never saw them without 
sensing the intense pathos of the whole world struggle. 

The American Red Cross workers were not out for spec- 
tacles, but no man who did not sense the great spectacle in 
Flanders was fit to work there, and no man could intelli- 
gently do the work of relief if he did not know something 
of the whole mighty struggle of which it was a part. 



CHAPTER VI 

The King and the Queen 

THE war in Flanders revolved around the Xing and 
the Queen. The relief work of the American Red 
Cross for Belgium was done with their closest cooperation 
and often directly through them. 

From the time of the battle of the Yser, until the end 
of the war, the King and Queen lived in a villa on the 
beach at La Panne, or on a farm in what is called the 
Moeres, three miles away. The greater part of the winter 
of 1917-18 they were living in the Moeres as La Panne, 
it was said, was considered too dangerous. But they were 
in La Panne nearly every day, and on roads which were 
shelled, or in the trenches. Moreover, shells went over 
them in the Moeres constantly and bombs several times 
fell in the garden. 

One of our men who went down to the farm just about 
nightfall to see the King and Queen reported that German 
shrapnel was bursting all the time that he was there, 
around a Belgian sausage balloon just above, but that the 
King sat smoking peacefully on the porch with General 
Jungblut, the little Princess Marie-Jose and the Countess 
Caramon de Chimay were sketching in the yard, and the 
Queen was walking up and down the road. The danger 
was less in some places than others, but there was no real 
safety. 

Of all the great figures of the World War none have 
captured the popular imagination more than the King and 
the Queen of the Belgians. They represented a small 
kingdom against a powerful empire. With their people, 
they made a right choice in the beginning — that of oppos- 

38 



THE KING AND THE QUEEN 39 

ing the passage of German troops at any cost. They were 
situated in an especially dramatic place, all they did had 
dramatic significance, and they lived up to their high and 
noble part all through. 

During the war, Maeterlinck, the Belgian poet, made 
an address in France upon the King's birthday, and called 
him "The King of the Sand Ridge." "Every time," said 
he, "the bloody veil of the tempest which hides him from 
our eyes is raised or rent, we behold him in the same spot 
in the same ridge of sand which has become the most 
splendid throne in the world, quietly, almost secretly, 
doing his duty as a crowned soldier." 

Already legends have begun to cluster around the names 
of this King and Queen. The tendency will be to see them 
through the mist. We were with them on the other side 
of the veil and saw them as they were. They lose nothing 
close up. We must resist the tendency to magnify them 
so that the outlines are blurred. History will be richer 
if we can keep their humanity distinct. 

In subsequent chapters details of work done with the 
King and Queen Avill be found. It is important here to 
ask what kind of people they are. 

"I have both French and German blood in my veins," 
said the King one night when the Germans were thun- 
dering all along the line. 

We find the exact statement in the semi-official Alma- 
nac de Bruxelles: 

"Albert I, Leopold-Clement-Marie-Meinrad, King of 
the Belgians, due de Saxe, prince of Saxe-Coburg and 
Gotha, sovereign of the independent state of the Congo, 
majeste, born at Brussels, April 8, 1875, son of Prince 
Philippe, Count of Flanders, and of Marie, Princess of 
Hohenzollern. 

"He succeeded his uncle, the King Leopold II, Decem- 
ber 23, 1909, and was married at Munich, October 2, 
1900, to Elisabeth, Duchess of Bavaria, who was born in 
the Chateau of Possenhoven, July 25, 1875." 



40 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

The same infallible authority states that his grand- 
mother, the wife of King Leopold I, a German, was the 
Princess Louise Marie d'Orleans, daughter of King Louis 
Philippe of France. 

The Belgians are fond of telling how he grew up with 
no idea of becoming King; how Elisabeth married him 
with no idea that she was to become Queen ; and how Albert 
and Elisabeth used to walk out on the boulevards of 
Brussels with their children on Sunday afternoons, quite 
like the other householders of that city. 

^Nobody can understand King Albert who does not 
understand what it means to be a good citizen. He is 
essentially a good citizen, w T ith civic pride and an in- 
tense desire for the common good, doing his work as a citi- 
zen through the hereditary job in which he finds himself. 

He is not busy amassing a fortune, nor enlarging his 
own political power, nor taking pleasure, but he is study- 
ing and working and traveling to promote the general 
welfare. Said the King that last winter in La Panne to 
one of our men, "The first business of the King is to be 
the servant of all the people." 

Unquestionably he is able to be the good citizen be- 
cause he is first of all the good man. He is devoted to his 
wife and children. He is simple, unassuming, honest, 
honorable, patient, open-minded, seeking light, but un- 
yielding. He has a fine sense of humor, not evident at 
first, but gradually revealing itself as you win his confi- 
dence and his shyness or bashfulness wears off. 

By hard study of books, by interviews with people who 
are supposed to know, by going himself where things are 
being done, the King is all the time fitting himself to 
lead, to advise, to help his country. He has a native 
intellect which the Belgians say is "not brilliant like that 
of Leopold II," but which is sure and steady ; and he is 
endowed with the surpassing gift of common sense. Most 
Belgians, however, who praise the genius of Leopold II 



THE KING AND THE QUEEN 41 

add something to the effect that King Albert has true 
nobility of soul. 

He is a constitutional monarch working through his 
Ministers. During the war, as Commander in Chief of 
the army, he had great legal power, and likewise, because 
of the circumstances, he had unusual moral power. 

That power he keeps. He brings it to bear on the war- 
ring elements of his country, on the race jealousies of 
Flemings and Walloons, on the political jealousies of 
Catholic, Liberal and Socialist, and on the personal jeal- 
ousies of those who stayed in the country and those who 
were out of the country during the war. It is no exagger- 
ation to say that this personal, unifying, harmonizing 
influence of the King has done much to hold things to- 
gether and to enable Belgium to make rapid progress to- 
ward recovery. 

King Albert, is a big man, 6 feet, 3 or 4 inches tall, of 
powerful build, light golden hair and mustache, blue eyes, 
ruddy face, and of slow deliberate speech. Queen Elisa- 
beth is a dainty little woman, much more beautiful than 
any of her photographs, with fair hair, also with blue 
eyes, low voiced but quicker in speech and in movement 
than the King. They have three children, Prince Leopold, 
Duke of Brabant, the heir to the throne, born Novem- 
ber 3, 1901, Prince Charles, or "Charlie," Count of Flan- 
ders, born October 10, 1903, and the Princess Marie- 
Jose, born August 4, 1906. Their beautiful family life 
is indicated by the fact that the King speaks of the Queen 
as "my wife" and of his children as "my boys" or "my 
little girl." He said to one of our men when he was dis- 
cussing education : "I like my boys to go to public school 
and play football. It is good for young princes to play 
with other boys and get their shins kicked." Once to his 
sister the King wrote testifying to the Queen's medical 
skill: "There is no use of my pretending to have a 
headache to escape from some stupid function for Elisa- 
beth always doctors me up and sends me along." 



42 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

The Queen has both German and Portuguese blood in 
her veins. She was born in Bavaria in a home devoted to 
science and music and filled with an unselfish spirit of 
service. 

Her father, Duke Karl Theodore, was a famous ocu- 
list, having removed over 6,000 cataracts. He was a 
most generous man in his service to the poor and unfor- 
tunate. The little Elisabeth was trained as his nurse. 
She got her degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leipzig be- 
fore her marriage and did active work in the hospital at 
Kreuth, Germany. She investigated especially tubercu- 
losis, and the sleeping sickness which was so deadly in 
the Congo, and likewise made a study of methods of 
training nurses. 

She has always made personal visits to people in trouble 
— back in the happy days in the old Germany, in the even 
happier days in Belgium before the war, and all through 
the great struggle. She has the Bavarian love of music 
and plays beautifully on the violin. It is a grim com- 
mentary on the changes of life that this gentle loving soul 
should ever have to say of the Germans as she has said: 
"Between them and me there has fallen a curtain of iron 
that will never again be lifted." 

When the King and Queen were driven back to the Yser, 
they both made their second great decision of the war, a 
decision which gives them a mighty hold on the affections 
of their own people, and is one of the secrets of their 
popularity throughout the world. They put aside com- 
fort and safety, chose to share the common lot of danger 
and hardship and buckled down to daily tasks of the 
hardest kind to help win the war. 

The King led his men in the trenches and from head- 
quarters. He worked with his Minister of War, his Chief 
of Staff, and the Allied chiefs. And he went to the worst 
places of the worst sectors to cheer the men holding the 
lines. He could talk Flemish to the simple farm boys and 
French to the university students from Brussels and Liege. 



THE KING AND THE QUEEN 43 

On October 28, during the battle of the Yser, the little 
Queen said to Hugh Gibson, Secretary of the American 
Legation at Brussels: "As long as there is one square 
foot of Belgium, free of the Germans, I will be on it." 
"She said it," said Gibson, "simply in answer to a 
question from me, but there was a big force of courage 
and determination behind it." She made her words good, 
and she did her part with extraordinary courage and 
ability. 

Our Red Cross men would meet her sometimes in the 
mud of the trenches. One of them writing home in 1917, 
described such an encounter : 

"The first time I ever saw the Queen was in the front 
trenches just before Christmas. Her eldest son, Leopold, 
Duke of Brabant, was with her in the uniform of a Bel- 
gian private. A daintily dressed little lady, with a sweet 
face and a winning smile, she made her way from dugout 
to dugout in the slime and mud, with chocolate and ciga- 
rettes and other gifts for the men. They idolize her not 
so much for the chocolate and cigarettes as because she is 
there to see for herself what they have to endure and to 
take her share of the danger. As one of them said to me, 
'When we see the Queen, we feel that we are not forgot- 
ten, that the war will not last forever, that some day we 
will all be back in Brussels.' " * 

Her medical and surgical knowledge, her nursing abil- 
ity, her experience in public health work, and her great 
store of human sympathy had full expression in the war. 
In "The Hospital of the Queen" and "The Works of Her 
Majesty, the Queen," that part of the story is set down. 

Though the King and Queen walked on a great stage, 
nothing is as far from the mark as to think of them as 
theatrical. 



*Her Majesty used flowers effectively to cheer wounded men. Expert 
horticulturists in the army, under direction of Dr. Depage, made 
a remarkable rose garden in the mud of Flanders which produced 
thousands of blossoms. 



44 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Though the King dropped down upon the Peace Con- 
ference from the sky, though the King and Queen both 
went to England for a royal wedding by aeroplane, though 
they make a tour of the United States, or Brazil, or Spain, 
it is done simply and for a definite purpose. They use the 
aeroplane because it is easier and quicker. They travel 
to learn and to promote good will. The non-theatrical side 
of the King was never better put than by Mark Sullivan 
when he said: "The King was at all times during the 
war merely the Chief Engineer, who happened to be re- 
sponsible for the job when the dam broke." That means 
much to Americans at least. When I remember him com- 
ing away on foot from a fire in a peasant's cottage, or see 
again his long figure on a bicycle hurrying from one task 
to another, or recall him on a motor cycle, in a motor car 
or on horseback as occasion demands, I see a man intent 
on a great job who happens to be a monarch and who is 
presumably owner of a throne and a crown which perhaps 
are in storage. 

Clemenceau went to visit the Belgian front during the 
Inst year of the war and the King went with him to Nieu- 
port — almost always a dangerous place. Many a brave 
fellow had been killed there. As they left their cars and 
started to walk slowly up the gentle slope to the ruins, a 
German shell burst near them on the right. Then a sec- 
ond fell on the left. Another burst behind. They were 
in the center of a bombardment. Probably their arrival 
had been seen from the Great Dune or from a balloon. 
Aides and orderlies were greatly excited but the King and 
Clemenceau never altered their pace or never suspended 
their talk. They went along quietly until they reached 
a dugout under a wall when the King invited his guest in, 
much as he might ask him in out of a shower. 

There is no sham or humbug or pretense about Albert 
and Elisabeth. 

The King did not dash up slopes. Tie walked to the 
business in hand. 



THE KING AND THE QUEEN 45 

It made the Belgians anxious and sometimes angry 
to think of the chances he took but there was no other 
way. "My life is no more precious than that of my men/' 
he told them. He knew that he had better be killed than 
give any suspicion that he was holding back. So he never 
held back. 

When one saw the King and Queen come back into 
Brussels after four years on the Yser — four years of blood 
and death, of tragedy and loss — at the head of the troops 
and amid the shouts and tears of a freed people, one liked 
to remember what he said to the Belgian Parliament 
August 4, 1914: "I have faith in our destinies. A na- 
tion which defends itself commands the respect of all. 
Such a nation can not perish. God will be with us in a 
just cause." 



CHAPTER YII 

The Headquarters Organization 

T Le Havre, the new organization of the Commission 
to Belgium had quickly taken form. It always was 
small. It purposely was kept small. We made the Bel- 
gians work for themselves, a thing they delighted to do. 
We got together a small staff of inspectors, accountants 
and clerks and finally the doctors and nurses for children's 
work. If we could have had Major Moten of Tuskegee 
and a hundred of his men who know how to do real things 
or one hundred Hampton boys we would have taken them 
at any time. If we could have had more surgeons and 
nurses and nurse's aids for the time of activity on the 
front and more doctors and nurses for civil hospital work, 
we would have taken them also. 

In Paris late in August, 19 17, we saw some twenty 
accountants and bookkeepers arrive at the Hotel Vouille- 
mont, late at night, just off the ship, and one of them, 
Francis de Sales Mulvey, was assigned to us. Mulvey 
did stenography, typewriting, and general office work 
until we could get hold of an office force, and then took 
entire supervision of the accounts. Mulvey was one of the 
men who would work until midnight to finish papers and 
bring them to a five o'clock morning train for signature. 

"It is bad business," so it is said, "to have the wife or 
members of the family of a chief about an office." But 
war makes new rules. In an emergency every available 
hand counts, and people of sense can fit in anywhere. 
Mrs. Bicknell and her daughters, Constance and Alberte, 
arriving late in September, speedily found work with us 
and stayed in Europe the greater part of three years. 

46 



THE HEADQUARTERS ORGANIZATION 47 

Mrs. Bicknell became head of the Department of Re- 
search and Private Secretary of the Commissioner. The 
daughters did children's work at Le Glandier, the school 
of the Queen, and at Le Havre. All three were valuable 
assets. 

By the end of October we had Captain Philip Horton 
Smith, a Boston architect, at the job of constructing ware- 
houses at Adinkerke. In November, Captain Ernest W. 
Corn, a Christian clergyman, joined us and was made 
head of the Bureau of Refugee Service. He also did 
effective emergency work in charge of warehouses when we 
entered Bruges. 

By January 1, 1918, we had hold of Dr. Park and Miss 
Wilcox for the baby saving work, and they were joined by 
Miss Damon, in March, an Hawaiian American, whose 
executive ability kept things moving at the Salle Franklin. 

Doctor Leonard Chester Jones, of New York, had been 
in Switzerland and had taken his degree of Doctor of Phi- 
losophy at Geneva. He had been working in the Pass 
Bureau of the Paris office, but we got him free in March, 
1918, and he was made First Aide to the Commissioner, 
and later office manager, proving himself a very valuable 
man. That summer of '18 he hurried to Switzerland and 
married a charming Swiss lady whose experience in the 
International Red Cross and whose knowledge of lan- 
guages were very useful to us. 

Major J. Wideman Lee, Jr., of New York City, a 
trained publicity man, now President of the George L. 
Dyer Company, was sent to us in July, 1918, to write up 
our work and make it easier for headquarters at Washing- 
ton to raise the huge sums we required. He soon showed 
his long business training and great driving power, and in 
the absence of the Commissioners ran the office, as well 
as his own department of Public Information. Lie was 
made Deputy Commissioner in October, 1918, and when 
he left Belgium in 1918 received the Order of the Crown 
from the King. General Atterbury, who knew his ability, 



48 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

offered him work with the S.O.S. of the army, and an 
army commission and salary, which he refused, because 
of his conviction that he was more needed with us. The 
Commissioner could not have remained so constantly at 
work in the field if he had not had a man of such loyalty 
and executive ability as Major Lee to leave sitting at the 
center of things. 

John W. Gummere, of New York, was one of the theo- 
logical students in the Episcopal Seminary who did not 
want any exemption from war service. He drove an am- 
bulance in '16 and '17, and came to us in '17 as our repre- 
sentative at the Paris office, putting through our requisi- 
tions for goods and acting for us at headquarters. Later 
he was transferred to La Panne in Flanders, and put in 
charge of our warehouses. He next came to Le Havre 
as director of work for children, but soon went to the 
Balkans as Aide to Colonel Bicknell. He is now the 
Reverend John W. Gummere, Rector of St. Paul's Epis- 
copal Church, Bound Brook, New Jersey, a big, fine fel- 
low, well fitted to "show faith by works." 

So the machine was gradually built. Prom all over the 
earth, people of different temperaments and abilities and 
widely differing experiences were brought together. Here 
was a French clerk who had been all shot to pieces in the 
trenches. Here was a little girl of Polish parentage, a 
stenographer, whose home was Paris, and whose national- 
ity was English, and who left us at last to marry an 
Australian. Here was a French stenographer who mar- 
ried a gallant young American officer she had met in Le 
Havre. Here was a square built Englishman, MacDonald, 
who came to audit the books, and who knew neither friend 
nor foe in his task. 

For a year, the Havre office was in the Hotel des 
Regates, with one of the loveliest of views over across the 
bay to Deauville and Trouville, and with the music of the 
waves on the beach. Then for six weeks we were at 123 
rue d'Etretat, and things were happening at the front 



THE HEADQUARTERS ORGANIZATION 49 

which made it certain that this was only a provisional 
arrangement. From November 1 to 22, we were installed 
in Bruges, with all the refuse of the German soldiers to 
clear away, and with great German-built stoves to keep 
us warm. On November 22, we established our office at 
Brussels, where the Commissioner had been established 
two days before the Germans evacuated the city, — getting 
from the Comite National quarters at 54 rue des Colonies. 

Headquarters life at Le Havre gave one a pleasant, but 
not a "soft" job by any means. 

There was a constant stream of visitors to be dealt with. 

Letters in French, Flemish and English were piled up 
every morning to be sorted and answered. 

Applications for help came in every day from individ- 
uals, from societies or from the government. 

Appropriations began to go through, hastened by prompt 
action in Paris, upon our recommendations and by close 
cable connection between Paris and Washington. The 
first money spent was upon children. Money for supplies 
and warehouses quickly followed. Then came the appro- 
priations for refugees and military relief. 

Every six months there was a budget to make for the 
next six months, and to make a budget for relief work in 
war time in a foreign land, one had to be both a relief 
worker and a mind reader. 

There were reports to get off for the Commissioner to 
Europe and through him to the whole United States. 

There were important people to receive and take about. 

Le Havre was on one of the main routes between London 
and Paris, that via Southampton. It was a never ending 
source of delight to see the sorts and conditions of men 
who went through. 

Red Cross people, like Major Stanley Field, were going 
to England to buy supplies. Paul Rainey, the great ani- 
mal photographer and hunter, was going home. Chevril- 
lon, Hoover's agent in Paris, the talented Frenchman who 
helped the Red Cross get started in France was off for a 



50 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

conference with his London office. Miss Mabel T. Board- 
man was coming to study Red Cross work in France, Bel- 
gium, Italy and England ; Mrs. Whitelaw Beid was going 
back to London to "carry on" there throughout the war; 
English Quakers were taking the boat to go on leave. 
Edward T. Devine was coming for work with Major 
Folks in Paris. Paul Kellogg had finished a job for the 
Bed Cross in Italy and was on his way back to N"ew York. 
Major Byrne, Deputy Commissioner for Italy, was on a 
mission to London. Captain Twose, of the Bed Cross 
Commission to Roumania, was headed for Boulogne ; Mc- 
Lanahan or Pomeroy, of the Boulogne office, were down 
for a conference, — and so it went. Every one had a 
different experience and a different errand. Army people, 
navy people, relief people of all nations streamed back 
and forth through Le Havre and the Commissioner saw 
many of them. 

JSTo more heartening visits were made than those of our 
own national officers from Paris or Washington. Henry 
P. Davison was hurrying back and forth across the At- 
lantic, urging things forward everywhere. Ivy L. Lee 
came and made a speech which revealed for the first time 
to us how practically the whole United States had enlisted 
in the Bed Cross, and it gave us new power. 

Eliot Wadsworth of the War Council, and George Sim- 
mons, Manager of the Southwestern Division, Perkins 
and Gibson, successive Commissioners for all Europe, 
cheered us on and helped us see more clearly the direc- 
tion to take. 

In the year and more that headquarters were at Le 
Havre, the city gradually took on a different aspect for 
Americans. The American Army came. An American 
base was established with General Coulter in command. 
Americans arriving and departing had to report there. 
The little Southhampton boat began to come in loaded 
with American officers. At last American Army trans- 
ports began to dock at Le Havre, and long lines of Ameri- 



THE HEADQUARTERS ORGANIZATION 51 

can troops began to march off to the rest camp. The Paris 
office of the American Red Cross put men at Le Havre 
to render service to these troops, and all our supplies and 
all our personnel were at the service of the Americans. 
No order for this had to be given. With every man, the 
American job was the first job. 

The ladies of the Commission did not content them- 
selves with translations and other office work, but estab- 
lished relations with the British, French and Belgian 
military soldiers in Le Havre, visiting the soldiers, carry- 
ing fruit, cigarettes and chocolate and other little gifts. 
A Committee of Belgian and American ladies took re- 
sponsibility for this form of welfare work for the Belgian 
hospital in the rue Ancelot, and the Red Cross helped 
finance it. On this committee were Madame Paul Hy- 
mans, Madame Renkin, the Countess Goblet d'Alviella, 
Mademoiselle H,elene Goblet d' Alviella, Madame Bassom- 
pierre, Madame Jean de Mot, and Mrs, John van Schaick, 
Jr. 

Another Committee of American ladies for hospital 
work was under the chairmanship of Mrs. John Ball Os- 
borne, wife of the American Consul at Le Havre, who co- 
operated so faithfully with us. It consisted of Mrs. 
Ernest P. Bicknell, Mrs. William Mathews, Mrs. John de 
Mot, Mrs. Louis Orrell, Mrs. Bradford, and Mrs. van 
Schaick. Mrs. Whitlock, while not a member of this 
Committee, helped them and did herculean service by her- 
self along the same line. These ladies, financed by the 
Commission for Belgium, carried fruit and comforts to 
the American soldiers in the hospitals of Le Havre, not 
forgetting the allied comrades who often lay by the side 
of the Americans. 

In the great rush of wounded from the battles of July, 
1918, these ladies were very busy. Mrs. van Schaick 
went into the French Military Hospital at the Hotel 
Frascati, which was caring for wounded American sol- 
diers, and worked as a nurse's aid for some weeks. The 



52 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

hospitals did not have personnel to handle the patients. 
Doctors and nurses were overworked, doing only the most 
essential things. Besides, most of them did not speak 
English and our boys did not speak French. The number 
of little things a person entirely untrained can do as a 
nurse's aid at such a time is indicated by the following 
list kept at Frascati: 

"Took down records of the wounded American soldiers, 
four papers for each. Collected patients' letters, took 
them to censor, who was a wounded officer on top floor. 
Translated a letter written in Italian into English, so 
censor could pass on it. Got the passes for the slightly 
wounded going out. Fed soldiers helpless through wounds 
in hands or arms, or very ill. Gave out newspapers, fruit, 
matches, cigarettes and writing paper. Handed out uni- 
forms for men going out for the day and other clothing 
like socks and underwear. Washed feet. Prepared spe- 
cial soup on alcohol lamp. Bathed very ill men on head 
and hands with cologne. Put into English lists of surgical 
appliances and material the French surgeons were asking 
of the American Red Cross. Attended funerals of the 
boys who died and was the only woman at the grave of 
some of them. Got the wreaths for these funerals, tied 
them with our colors and put them on the casket. Brought 
back the American flag from the grave. Wrote to fami- 
lies of the dead boys. Prepared little boxes in which boys 
could keep bullets or pieces of shell taken out of them. 
Helped an American sergeant entertain his French sweet- 
heart and her mother who had come to visit him. Tele- 
phoned. Sorted, counted and sent out dirty linen. Got 
men ready to take motor rides. Wrote letters for men. 
Interpreted for doctors, nurses and patients. Mended 
clothes. Picked up trash." 

In this hospital Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Carstairs, two 
English ladies, had helped as nurse's aids for two years. 
Mrs. Barton, wife of a Colonel in the British Army, 
was an American, born in Princeton, New Jersey. She 



THE HEADQUARTERS ORGANIZATION 53 

had lived in India, Africa and England so long that, as 
she put it, "I believed I had lost all my Americanism. 
But when I saw the first American wounded, I knew that 
I could never lose my feeling for my native country." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Getting Started in Flanders 

1ST all effective charity or relief work, it is accepted as 
a fundamental that nothing shall be done for a man 
which he can do for himself, that every effort shall be 
made to cheer and encourage those in distress, that the 
work done shall be adequate to the need, and carried on 
until the need is met, that neighbors and friends should 
be encouraged to take the lead in doing what is necessary, 
and that relief organizations and their workers should 
keep in the background. 

The first Commissioner for Belgium, Colonel Bicknell, 
had had a greater experience in relief work at home and 
abroad than anyone else in the Red Cross organization. He 
believed that the fundamentals of relief do not change in 
war time or in the foreign field. From the beginning he 
was insisting : "Use the French and Belgian Committees 
and their Red Cross Societies. Cooperate with them. 
Strengthen them. Take advantage of their long experi- 
ence in the war and their knowledge of their own people. 
Let us do our work largely through them, use our in- 
fluence to effect mergers, get rid of competition, and bring 
about the highest efficiency. Then let us pour our money 
and supplies through their channels. If we do this, when 
we leave any country, we won't make a great gap which 
it will discourage the people to fill, but we will leave local 
organizations stronger than we found them and more able 
to do what we have to leave undone." 

It is the opinion of his colleagues in the work that 
the principles which he laid down are sound principles 

54 



GETTING STARTED IN FLANDERS 55 

and that future Red Cross work in war and in peace — 
abroad and at home — must he based upon them. 

"Work," said he from the first day, "through the govern- 
ment, and the existing agencies. Keep personnel at a 
minimum. Don't let us load up with a great number 
of people whom we can't use. Get experienced workers. 
When our people get here, put them in alongside the 
foreign worker, first to learn, and then to help." 

But some tasks were obviously American almost ex- 
clusively, from the beginning. 

In both France and Belgium, there was need of supplies 
of all kinds and of transport so as to place them where 
they were wanted. Finance, purchase and transport were 
distinctly American jobs to be done by American work- 
ers. The Paris office built up an able staff for finance, ac- 
counting, purchase and transportation and directed that 
these be at the service of Belgium, Italy and the other 
countries, as well as France. 

There was a shortage in personnel along some lines 
from the moment we landed until the end of the war. 
There were never too many people, for example, able to 
repair automobiles. There were never too many nurses, 
especially those willing to nurse contagion among sick 
civilians as well as to care for soldiers. There was urgent 
need from the beginning of sending men in American uni- 
form among the soldiers and civilians to let them know 
that "the Americans are here." 

To build up an organization able to do what the Bel- 
gians could not do and not to attempt to take their places 
in what they could do and ought to do was our problem. 

At Havre, the Belgian Ministers talked things over with 
us and agreed with Colonel Bicknell that an important task 
would be to bring in supplies of food and clothing, drugs, 
dressings and bandages, and place these where they could 
be quickly made available in case of need. 

We were faced with the choice every military com- 
mander had to make, whether to have things which we 



56 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

needed back where they would be safe but inaccessible, or 
forward and more or less in danger of being captured 
or destroyed by the enemy. 

The Belgian Minister of the Interior had placed stores 
at Conchil near Montreuil-sur-mer, fifty miles from the 
front. We decided to establish stores of clothing at Le 
Havre for the use of refugees but to place such food and 
hospital supplies as we could get, as well as part of the 
clothing, near the front. If the enemy moved forward 
and there was a rush of new refugees, or if the Allies 
moved forward and Belgian civilians were liberated, or if 
the Germans should separate the British and Belgian 
Armies from the French and cut us off from our stores at 
Paris and Le Havre — these stores at the front would be 
invaluable. 

With the Ministers Berryer and Vandevyvere, we 
studied maps and could see only one place to locate store- 
houses for Belgium, and that was Dunkirk. It was the 
seaport nearest the trenches. It had plenty of empty 
warehouses and we were determined to rent if possible and 
not spend time and money in building, especially as we 
had neither carpenters, hardware nor lumber. 

Dunkirk was near enough for one great purpose. What 
was passing in our minds may be seen by this remark of 
Colonel Bicknell to M. Vandevyvere, the Belgian Minister 
of Finance. "If we get done with trench war and the 
armies move, then is the time we will need these sup- 
plies. But just at that time the roads will be blocked by 
troops of all kinds, railroads will be overworked, and trucks 
simply will not be available to haul from Paris or Le 
Havre. If we expect to be of service, we have got to have 
our stuff where we can get it; we must take risks." 

When we decided to put stores at the front and to go to 
pick out a spot, the government acted quickly. The Min- 
ister of War gave us a fast closed car with one of his 
best drivers. The Minister of the Interior called up the 
frontier guard at Ghyvelde, 200 miles away, to advise 



GETTING STARTED IN FLANDERS 57 

them that we were coming without waiting for passes. At 
the same time he telegraphed to Monsieur Jean Maes to 
meet us in Dunkirk to help us. M. Maes, a member of 
the Belgian Parliament, living at Bousbrugge in Free 
Belgium, was acting as an officer of the Minister of the 
Interior in charge of food supplies for the civilian inhab- 
itants of Free Belgium. We had reached Le Havre and 
opened headquarters Monday, September 3. On Tuesday, 
we had had our conference. By Wednesday at 7 P. M. 
we rolled into Dunkirk, 212 miles north. We were im- 
pressed at once with dark, silent streets and people seek- 
ing shelter in cellars. By 8 :45 P. M. we understood why 
and also why the Belgian Ministers had appeared some- 
what reluctant for us personally to stay in Dunkirk very 
long. The Germans came over with several planes and 
many bombs. We went down and foolishly stood in the 
big open door of the hotel quite alone. There I might 
easily have lost my chief as a machine gun bullet hit his 
shoe a glancing blow. Luckily, this was all that hit us. 
The battle raged between aviators and anti-air craft bar- 
rage with terrifying noise, houses were crashing, but 
clanging down the dark streets through it all came the 
ambulances of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, which we 
afterward were to know so well, "on a work of love in the 
midst of war." 

The next night, Thursday, September 6, I made the 
following entry in my diary: 

"More excitement tonight. Another alette just after we 
got to bed. (One more by aviators and one by long range 
gun later in the night.) Dunkirk beats the world for 
sirens. Spent the whole day on that warehouse matter. 
It was a revelation to us to go down to the docks this 
morning and to find that the building we were after was 
a smoking ruin with huge chunks of masonry blown in 
every direction by a powerful bomb dropped by an aviator. 
Don't hardly know what to do. Maes said simply 'formi- 



58 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

dable,' which seems to be French for terrific or unbelieva- 
ble, or 'the limit.' " 

The best advice we could get, British, French, Belgian, 
as well as that of our own Consular Agent was against 
putting stores in Dunkirk. Stores were coming into the 
port every week but people did not leave them around the 
docks or in the city longer than necessary. Dunkirk then, 
as throughout the war, was a city especially picked out for 
attack. 

At La Panne, in Free Belgium, only seven miles from 
the trenches, we found conditions little better. My own 
record puts it as follows under date of September 7 : 

"Bicknell and I came into Belgium today after calling 
on Mordey, Adjutant of the Friends' Ambulance Unit. 
Went to the Ocean Hospital and found that it had just 
been shelled. My room was full of broken glass. Two 
men were killed. Two nurses hurt. They have had a 
shell in the storeroom and a bomb in the street back of the 
hospital." 

There was no port at La Panne. Nothing but fishing 
boats landed on the beach. 

We took up the matter of a location of the stores with 
the Belgian Chief of Staff. He assigned an Engineer 
Officer to help us. 

Major Cobra and Commandant Vierset of the Head- 
quarters Staff, Colonel Nolf, Director of the Belgian Mili- 
tary Hospital at Cabour, and Jean Steyaert, C ommissaire 
of the Arrondissement of Fumes, walked many miles 
helping us study the various sites proposed. Commandant 
H. Dustin and Commandant Vierset, in charge of Belgian 
Army supplies, put what material they had available at 
our service, so that we would not be delayed too much 
getting started. 

We decided to give up the idea of a seaport, to put our 
stores in Belgium instead of France, and in the open coun- 
try instead of a town which was more likely to be at- 
tacked. 



GETTING STARTED IN FLANDERS 59 

When we started looking for locations, we found the 
same kind of difficulties which one confronts in Washing- 
ton, or jSTew York, or anywhere else, when one wants to 
locate a municipal hospital or school for tubercular chil- 
dren. Each neighborhood wants another neighborhood 
chosen. "Don't put it near the children's colony or the 
hospital, for it will draw the German shells or the bombs 
of aviators." "Please don't take my field, kind gentlemen, 
as it is the only field I have for my cow." These were 
the kind of things we heard. One place was too dangerous 
— another place was too wet. A third place was too inac- 
cessible, and so it went. At last we settled on both Adin- 
kerke and Cabour, partly on the principle that it is best 
not to put "one's eggs all in a single basket," and partly 
on the principle that "Man proposes and God disposes," 
and there was no place at the front where the eggs could 
be absolutely safe. 

The man who superintended the putting up of our 
warehouses at the front was Captain Philip Horton Smith, 
a Boston architect who in the latter part of the war was 
busy putting up hospitals and storehouses for the army. 
When I picked him up at Calais, October 19, 1917, and 
started with him up through the British Zone, and dis- 
covered that he had no passes, I was thoroughly irritated 
about it. When I saw later how people were delayed get- 
ting passes in Paris, I gave Smith a big credit mark for 
starting without them. It was a simple matter to fix him 
up when we got to Major Tinant, Surete Militaire Beige. 

The barracks came up by rail in sections, from the Con- 
struction Department of the American Red Cross in Paris 
and Smith had the cooperation and help of Major Emer- 
son, head of that department, in this first job. 

There were all kinds of delays but Smith showed grit 
and patience and in the next seven months got 9 bar- 
racks erected, each 100 ft. long and 20 ft. wide. 

Smith himself wrote of the work as follows : 

"We worked with the Belgian Army, which loaned us 



60 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

a gang of soldiers under the able command of Lieutenant 
Roelandt of Grand. We were also greatly assisted in ob- 
taining material by the Belgian Army authorities, who 
cooperated with us at every turn in the most gratifying 
manner. 

"We encountered great difficulties, owing to our work 
being in the zone of activities and were very lucky in 
narrowly escaping the destruction of our barracks and 
hospitals on numerous occasions, notably in the great day- 
light raid of early ^November, 19 17, when we were heavily 
bombed, one missile falling only a few yards from the 
work then going on. 

"Personally, in spite of the discomforts and great diffi- 
culties of every sort which I encountered in carrying 
through my part of the work to a satisfactory conclusion, 
I look back on those months spent in Belgium with the 
greatest pleasure. I never got entangled in the miles of 
red tape that hampered other departments. 

"I am grateful for having had the opportunity of com- 
ing in contact with the Belgians, a people whom I greatly 
admire. Seeing them as I did, in the midst of discom- 
fort and terror, cut off from their homes and communi- 
cation with their loved ones, enduring privation and often 
with a lack of proper appreciation and understanding 
from their Allies, I came to have a great affection based 
on respect and admiration for this fine, clean, sturdy, 
honest, and industrious people." 

We put Lieutenant John Gummere in charge of filling 
the barracks. In the summer of 1918, shipments were 
stopped on account of the German advance. We made 
arrangements to blow up the barracks if the Germans came 
so fast that we could not get the stores away. 

We refused, however, to accept the advice of some Bel- 
gians and a few Americans visiting this front to evacuate 
at once on account of the danger. 

In this same summer of 1918, we began to draw on 
these stores to feed refugees. 



GETTING STARTED IN FLANDERS 61 

At the same time we turned over two of the barracks 
nearest Cabour to the Minister of the Interior for a refu- 
gee clearing station which he operated in conjunction with 
the Friends' Ambulance Unit. 

In the fall of 1918, when the army and hospitals moved 
forward, and Belgium from the North Sea to the Scheldt 
was liberated, these supplies were worth almost their 
weight in gold to us. 

As we had foreseen, it was almost impossible to get 
things up from Paris at this time. As we fed refugees, 
supplied hospitals, and distributed condensed milk for 
children, we were thankful that our Commissioner, Colonel 
Bicknell, had been an old, experienced relief worker, that 
he had insisted on these stores far up at the front, that 
he had never listened to advice to move them back, or 
abandon the warehouses when things looked threatening. 
He had two remarks for such occasions : 

"We've no business in this war if we are not willing 
to take chances," and "Things never are as bad as repre- 
sented." 



CHAPTER IX 

The Hospital of the Queen 

THE Hospital of the Queen," "The Hospital of Dr. 
Depage," and the "Ocean Hospital" were names 
variously given to the main hospital of the Belgian Red 
Cross Society at La Panne. 

Like so much in recent Belgian history, this hospital 
dates back to the Battle of the Yser, with its thousands of 
casualties and its utter lack of facilities for the care of the 
wounded. 

Of the origin Dr. Depage writes as follows : 

"Toward the end of November, 1914, after the battle 
of the Yser, I found myself in Calais. I had come to or- 
ganize there the hospital 'Jeanne d'Arc' with the funds 
put at my disposal by the Belgian Bed Cross. 

"Queen Elisabeth in the course of a visit which she had 
made to our wounded, proposed to me that we establish 
at La Panne a new hospital which she desired to see cre- 
ated nearer the front and upon Belgian territory. 

"At the moment, with the exception of the Belgian 
Field Hospital, which we owe to the generosity of the 
English and which was later transferred to Hoogstade, our 
only surgical hospital in the zone of the armies was at 
Furnes. It was served by religious sisters whose good will 
could not supply the lack of professional training. Her 
Majesty understood the great advantage that there would 
be in giving competent surgical attention to the severely 
wounded before an evacuation which meant a long journey 
by automobile or railway train. 

"I accepted Her Majesty's proposition with enthusiasm 
as I was sure that in realizing her ideals, we would be 

62 




w o 



Q 6 

TO 



h 




THE HOSPITAL OF THE QUEEN 63 

able to make a notable contribution to the care of our 
wounded. 

"La Panne is on the border of the North Sea, ten kilo- 
meters to the southwest of Nieuport and about a dozen 
kilometers behind the trenches. It is the last village on 
the Belgian coast before the frontier of Trance." 

The Queen secured for their use the Ocean Hotel prop- 
erty on the beach. 

By 1917, there had been added to the original hotel 
building at least forty pavilions or barracks, from butchery 
to chapel, contributed by various agencies. There were the 
Pavilion de reception, Pavilion British, Pavilion Every- 
man, Pavilion Albert-Elisabeth, Pavilion Americain. 

There was the Institut Marie Depage, and on a lonely 
sand dune facing the ocean, there was the grave of Marie 
Depage who raised money for the hospital in America in 
1915 and lost her life on the Lusitania coming home. 
Her body was washed ashore on the coast of Ireland, re- 
covered by Dr. Depage, her husband, and buried at La 
Panne along the coast just above the hospital. 

This lonely coast town made a deep impression on all 
who saw it for the first time and even many of those who 
lived there for months never got away entirely from a feel- 
ing of awe. Ugly brick and wooden buildings strung 
along the beach, and on streets at right angles to it, sol- 
diers quartered in villas whose windows were often broken 
and boarded up, nearly everything in the village shabby 
or half destroyed — shells of houses here and there wrecked 
by aviators or guns, refugees crowded in between soldiers' 
barracks, little stores thriving when they could get any- 
thing to sell, two hotels carrying on though both had been 
hit, at one end of the beach the two modest villas of the 
King and Queen and their officers, and at the other end 
toward the trenches — the Ocean Hospital — yet this was 
the very heart and soul of Belgium, — the real capital of 
the country. 

"I knocked tonight at Dr. Depage's door," one of our 



64 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

men wrote in 1917, "and for a time no one came. It was 
very dark except for the line of surf. I turned and 
watched the ocean rolling in and thought of all that had 
happened on this beach since the days of the early North- 
men and of how many men had 'fought in Flanders.' Off 
to my left were England and France and home. Up the 
coast to my right, there were the Germans. Star shells 
and gun flashes lit up the night. Behind the Germans 
were Ostend and Ghent and our dear Belgian friends of 
other days — so near we could have motored over in an 
hour, and yet so far, with the trenches between, that we 
may never see them. Then the door opened and I went in 
to a man who may have sentiment but who never showed 
it, and who never for one instant seemed to get away 
from the tasks of the Belgian Red Cross Society." 

Antoine Depage was physically and mentally a big man. 
He was of humble origin and seemed to have the strength 
of generations of Vikings behind him. He had a great 
frame and an iron will. He knew surgery and medicine 
and hospitals and he knew also what other countries had 
discovered and the men who were doing things. 

He had fought his way to the front at Brussels in his 
profession before the war. Distinguished French, English 
and American doctors told us in 19 17 what Dr. Carrel 
said after the war: "The Ocean Hospital is one of the 
greatest hospitals the war produced." 

The secret of it was the secret of good work, able men 
and the best equipment money could buy. 

Depage got doctors and nurses from England, France, 
Italy and the United States, as well as his own country. 
He had to start with what he could get, but he never let 
up until he strengthened weak spots. He had Levaditi, a 
great French Bacteriologist, De Baisier of the University 
of Louvain, Delray of the University of Liege, Vande- 
velde of the University of Ghent, Carl Janssen Dele, Bene 
Sand, Dustin and Zunz of the University of Brussels — all 
great specialists and all playing the game. 



THE HOSPITAL OF THE QUEEN 65 

Depage is a Liberal and now after the war is a Senator 
in Parliament of the Liberal party, but he made a hos- 
pital where Catholics, Liberals and Socialists were equally 
free to work. The spirit was scientific, not limited by 
country, church or party. Depage proved that pure science 
is the best patriotism. 

Though he had fought the good fight for trained nurses 
before the war, like a sensible man he took what he could 
get during the war — whether trained nurses from Eng- 
land, peasant girls from Flanders, or cultured ladies of 
Brussels. Given a person of good health, good will, and 
common sense, he knew he could make a nurse, and some 
of these so-called "fancy ladies" stood in the forefront of 
this exacting profession when the war ended. Madame de 
Brockdorf and Madame Jean de Mot, both of whom lost 
their husbands while serving here, Madame Carl Janssen 
Dele and Madame Maurice Hanssens did especially valu- 
able work in executive positions. 

Dr. Eugene Poole of ISTew York, Dr. Yehtes, Dr. Lee, 
and Dr. Moody were among the American doctors who 
helped him, and Moody, stricken with disease, worked in 
the great push of 1918 until he was literally dying and 
only then consented to go away. These Belgian doctors 
speak very tenderly of the gallant doctor who now lies 
buried in the south of France. 

Mrs. Larz Anderson of Washington, Miss White, Miss 
Denning, Mrs. Snowden of Greenwich, Mrs. Dewitt Mac- 
Kenzie, and Miss Phylis Moore were among the helpful 
American ladies. When we first knew the hospital, Captain 
Charles Graux was business manager, and he was suc- 
ceeded by Maurice Hanssens. 

But here was a Red Cross Society with practically all 
its contributors and workers in occupied Belgium under 
the Germans. So there were two branches of the Society 
during the war : 

In Brussels, the Countess Jean de Merode, President, 
held things together and was able to accomplish important 



66 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

things for prisoners and for Belgian soldiers mutilated in 
the early fighting and left in the country. 

But the Grand Protector — the King, and the Honorary 
President — the Queen, were with the army. They helped 
make a new organization for the war. General Melis, 
Inspector General of the Service de 8 ante of the Belgian 
Army was made President. Dr. Depage was made Di- 
rector, Mr. G. Didier was elected Secretary, and he opened 
an office first at Calais and then in Paris, while an execu- 
tive committee was formed of Dr. Depage, Baron Guffinet 
and General Melis. 

The King settled in short order the question of the mili- 
tary status of Belgian Bed Cross doctors. The entire Bed 
Cross was taken into the military establishment, except 
the contributed funds which were left in charge of the 
executive committee. 

The doctors were commissioned in the army. Dr. 
Depage became a Colonel. He wore the uniform, and he 
had the insignia, but he never thought of himself as any- 
thing but Head Surgeon, and this was his strength and his 
weakness. He paid scant attention to the spirit of orders 
which interfered — he never followed along the paths of 
army red tape, he made some of the military men almost 
froth at the mouth with rage, and yet he was too big and 
important and valuable to be taken out and shot at sunrise. 
When real tension resulted, there was the little Queen 
with some common sense solution, or the King with a 
suggestion which Depage, out of both love and loyalty, 
would be quick to accept. As the situation worked out, 
the Belgian Red Cross Society had practically a free hand. 
Scientific ideas controlled. The doctors were free. If 
they needed something, a way was found to get it. Of 
course the regular army establishment felt that Depage 
and the Ocean Hospital got the pick of everything, and 
they did. 

The Belgian Bed Cross Society with its freedom and 
its funds was continually getting new things and raising 



THE HOSPITAL OF THE QUEEN 67 

standards. Instantly there was a demand all along the 
line for those same new things and one way or another 
they had to come. 

By the time we got to La Panne in 1917, Depage was 
in trouble. He had to move his hospital, his funds were 
exhausted, and England, which had supported him so 
loyally, was unable to do more. 

It was the time that the British were planning for their 
great push in Flanders to force the evacuation of Ostend 
and Zeebrugge, the bases of the menacing submarines. 
First they tried it along the coast, straight up from ISTieu- 
port. The Belgians moved out of La Panne and the sector 
along the coast and the British moved in. In a night old 
friendly sentinels were replaced by smart Tommies who 
stopped one and looked one all over. Old passes were no 
good. British Generals moved into the villas and thou- 
sands of British soldiers marched or played on the sand. 

Foreseeing this in time, Dr. Depage had put all his 
money into a great new hospital some six miles inland at 
Vinekem or Wulveringhem, two little Flemish villages 
side by side. There he had built some forty or fifty new 
modern barracks and a few larger buildings of brick, well 
lighted, with central heat, and with corridors and passages 
so wide that it seemed wasteful. Depage explained that 
a second row of cots could be placed in these corridors and 
still leave room to pass. It seemed fanciful and far- 
fetched, but 1918, with its terrible rush of wounded, was 
to fully vindicate this so-called extravagant and waste- 
ful man. 

Depage had spent 2,500,000 francs — all he had — on his 
Vinekem hospital, and it was still unfinished. He hoped 
the British would buy his Ocean LTospital at La 
Panne. They said they wanted it but the price was too 
high and these negotiations fell through. What we had 
then to decide was whether we would recommend to the 
American Red Cross in Paris that they give the Belgian 



68 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Red Cross a million with which to finish the Vinckem 
hospital. 

There was for it the support of the Queen who wel- 
comed us at Vinckem on our first visit, the fact that the 
Belgians had to get out of La Panne, and our belief in 
Depage's theory that hospitals, like the fighting men, must 
take chances, and build up where they can get the wounded 
quickly, even if they run a chance of being destroyed. 
For it also was the judgment of Doctor Alexander Lam- 
bert of New York who said to us: 

"Depage is a great man. Some of them hate him but 
they can't do without him. Back him up. He may be 
extravagant but he is extravagant to save life and he is 
able and honest." 

So we recommended an appropriation of 500,000 francs, 
and got it. The American Red Cross finished the hospital 
at Vinckem. But the British met with a reverse at Nieu- 
port. They instantly concentrated again at Ypres for 
the attack on the Passchendaele ridge. The Belgians 
moved back into the Nieuport-La Panne sector and the 
Belgian Red Cross now had two great establishments, 
both run under the name of Ambulance de V Ocean. 

During the winter of 1917-18, the hospital barracks 
at Vinckem were empty. At a little dinner at La Panne 
of Belgium and British officers, one of Depage' s enemies 
made a great laugh by describing the famous hospital "run 
by three men and a dog and with transport service of one 
bicycle." By midsummer the laugh was on the other side. 



CHAPTER X 

Belgian Red Cross Activities 

T 1ST the early summer of 1918, the Belgium Red Cross 
-*- Society had under its control five military hospitals 
serving the army: First Line: The Ocean Hospital at 
La Panne, and the new hospital at Vinekem to which we 
contributed 500,000 francs. Second Line: Hopital Vir- 
val of 400 beds on the outskirts of Calais, and Hopital 
Petit Fort Philippe — a mile from Gravelines — with 1,000 
beds. Third Line: Hopital Mortain in the department 
of Calvados south of Rouen with another 1,000 beds. 
From La Panne near the front line, it was 22 miles back to 
Gravelines and 250 miles back to Mortain. 

These hospitals, as a part of the army establishment, 
drew rations and all personnel was paid by the army. 
So whether funds came in to the Belgian Red Cross or not 
these hospitals could exist, but they could not carry on 
the high grade work they had been doing. 

Under date of May 8, 1918, I wrote Colonel Bicknell 
at Le Havre as follows : 

"Mr. Hanssens, Business Manager of the Ocean Hos- 
pital, on Sunday told me the condition of things in the 
Belgian Red Cross Society and asked our help. When 
you and I talked about this before, they had a reserve of 
several hundred thousand francs. This has been spent 
and the Society finds itself without resources except oc- 
casional small gifts and the profits of the canteen at the 
Ocean Hospital, which amounts to only a few thousand 
a year. 

"In the opinion of Mr. %' and of Mr. %' an officer 
of the King, neither of whom want to be quoted in any 

69 



70 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

way, it is important to keep the Belgian Red Cross So- 
ciety alive and independent but working in closest co- 
operation with the Service de Sante. Toward this co- 
operation 'Y' has been working for some months. Depage 
and Melis now pull together. If, however, the Belgian 
Red Cross goes out of business, the entire medical and 
surgical administration will become centered in the army. 
This will mean a certain amount of stagnation and red 
tape. Everybody seems to agree, even those who criticize 
Depage, that his influence has been powerful and uplifting 
in the army as well as in general. Everybody agrees that 
he is fearless, honest, intelligent and very progressive. If 
the Belgian Red Cross comes to depend entirely on the 
army, it is believed that Depage will be more or less ham- 
pered. Hanssens said 'If we need a new operating table 
for the Ocean Hospital, we ought to be free to get it and 
not have to wait three months.' In all matters of special 
equipment, experimentation, etc., they want liberty. 

"If the American Red Cross can give the Belgian Red 
Cross a monthly subsidy, the freedom can be maintained. 
I believe we ought to help the Belgian Red Cross Society 
because it is a Red Cross Society of standing, because the 
first job of all Red Cross Societies is the military hospi- 
tals, and because the main man in the Society is Depage 
and Depage is a real leader. 

"I recommend an appropriation of 25,000 francs per 
month on the condition that we are free at any time to 
withdraw from the undertaking." 

Colonel Bicknell was so frequently at the front and 
knew Depage so well that argument with him was un- 
necessary. Conservative usually in granting funds, given 
to making conditions which would stimulate the recipient, 
here he went far beyond me. It was a critical moment for 
the Allies. Up on our part of the front, the Germans had 
taken Mt. Kemmel and were now behind us. They were 
massing around Hazebrouck and there was grave danger 
of our having to give up the front line from Ypres to Nieu- 



BELGIAN RED CROSS ACTIVITIES 71 

port and fall back toward Dunkirk. It was time for a real 
stroke to cheer and stiffen everybody. Bicknell found 
that the American Red Cross in Paris and in London had 
taken precisely that view of the situation. They had given 
10,000,000 francs to the French Red Cross, 450,000 
pounds to the British Red Cross and smaller gifts to the 
Italian and Swiss Red Cross Societies. Colonel Bicknell 
requested a million francs for the Belgian Red Cross 
Society and the Finance Committee granted it. Then he 
arranged for Colonel James H. Perkins, Commissioner to 
Europe, to go to La Panne and present the check to the 
Queen as Honorary President of the Belgian Red Cross 
Society. It was some weeks before Colonel Perkins could 
get to our front but the Belgian Red Cross had been ad- 
vised of the grant and did not have to wait for the check to 
use it. The brave little Queen was happier even than 
Depage when she got the news. "Our brave men," she 
said. "It means so much for them." Her face fairly 
shone with joy. 

Finally on August 17, Bicknell and I met Colonel Perk- 
ins at Boulogne-sur-mer, coming back from England. With 
him was Major Daniel T. Pierce and Major J. Wideman 
Lee. 

They saw everything from Nieuport to Poperinghe, — 
front trenches, canteens, children's colonies, civil and mili- 
tary hospitals, — and on August 19, were received by both 
the King and Queen. The King was in a very happy 
mood, joked about living so long at La Panne, said he 
liked the sea view but was "fed up" with it, and in every 
way made the little ceremony much less stiff than these 
things are apt to be. Perkins got the check transferred 
to the King who promptly handed it to the Queen. Per- 
kins did it in the simplest, friendliest kind of a way and 
the King and Queen both showed deep feeling in the 
way they thanked the American Red Cross and the people 
of the United States. 

The money was used to equip the hospitals Petit Fort 



72 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Philippe, Virval and Mortain, and in improving condi- 
tions at Vinckem and La Panne. 

The Belgian Red Cross farm, in the Moeres, was an 
oasis in the midst of a desert of war. Shells went over 
but here were peace and plenty. Destruction was in the 
air about, but here things were produced. Not having 
milk, eggs, vegetables, chickens for the wounded, the 
Belgian Red Cross Society raised them. Madame Joos- 
tens, wife of a great horse breeder and fancier, was in 
charge. Her husband commanded a battery at ISTieuport. 
The farm was run on modern lines and any cow which 
did not give her 20 or 25 liters of milk per clay had to go. 
The best cow gave 32 liters. 

Long before the armistice, the Belgian Red Cross was 
looking forward to service in the occupied country. "As 
we move forward," said Madame Joostens, "we must pre- 
pare to deal with a population in which are many ema- 
ciated, many tubercular, and a great number of children 
in need of a diet of eggs and milk." 

On September 28, the Belgian Army, held on the de- 
fensive so long, left their trenches and began the famous 
battle of the "Mountain of Flanders." In one day they 
captured Houthulst Forest at which they had looked for 
over four years. They were well astride the Passchendaele 
ridge now which the British had captured foot by foot 
in 1917 and had had to give up in the great German 
offensive of 1918. The British fighting with them said, 
"These Belgians are wonderful. They must have webbed 
feet to go over such ground." 

The wounded came back by the thousand. ISTow every 
hospital facility was taxed to the uttermost. Vinckem, no 
longer run by "three men, a dog and a bicycle," was full 
and the expensive wide corridors, as Depage had foreseen, 
cared for long rows of cots which he had in reserve. Amer- 
ican Red Cross money unquestionably saved many lives. 

Under date of October 5, 1918, I wrote Colonel Bick- 
nell from La Panne: 



BELGIAN RED CROSS ACTIVITIES 73 

"Depage has risen to the emergency in great shape. 
The Ocean Hospital (which had been almost entirely evac- 
uated under army orders) jumped from two doctors and 
six nurses and perhaps fifty beds, to 800, then 1,000, and 
now tonight 1,500. The hospital at Vinckem jumped 
from 400 to 1,600 beds. 

"Depage's judgment in building it has been vindicated. 
(It was a close question, however, whether Germans 
wouldn't capture it.) The plan Depage drew with wide 
corridors has saved the day, for these corridors are wide 
enough for wards. Depage came up with a rush from 
Mortain on the 27 and the offensive started the 28. He 
took command of the hospital in person and spends his 
days at Vinckem and his nights at La Panne. The 
great lack was personnel. I gave my secretary. Civilian 
doctors were impressed. I sent Dr. Rothholz and her nurse 
from Leysele. Doctor Park came and jumped in to help 
for a day or two. A cable brought 25 nursing students 
from London, Belgian girls, household servants in La 
Panne, were taken over, and so it went. Nurses and 
doctors were hurried up from Mortain but this supply was 
limited as the wounded were evacuated in that direction. 

"All in all, it has been handled well. Doctors have op- 
erated 20 hours on a stretch and nurses have worked 40 
hours out of 48, but it is better now. 

"The worst thing was that the jump was so quick and 
the ground so bad and the roads so few that the army 
got away from us and the wounded were not picked up 
quickly the first three days. There is no doubt but that 
a number were lost that way. 

"There seem to be up to date 15,000 casualties, 8,000 
of which are grave, 5,000 dead. The proportion of offi- 
cers was very great, probably 1,000 casualties and I was 
told 800 dead. 

"The Belgians fought fiercely, with an anger long pent 
up and very savage when they struck regiments like the 
one which shot up Dinant early in the war. They took 



74 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

5,000 or 6,000 prisoners in the first two days. If they 
had had roads and reserves, or reserves without any more 
roads, they would have gone through to Bruges or Ghent. 

"Another interesting thing: Seeing the lack in quick 
attention at the front line and the inability of regimental 
surgeons to cope with it, Depage is starting two advanced 
surgical stations — one at Poelcappelle on the south side 
of the Forest of Houthulst, and the other at Jonckershove 
near Houthulst village on the north side. Dr. Delporte 
is in charge of the first and has been operating these two 
days, and Dr. jSTeuman is in charge of the second which 
is placed today. These are installed in tents which the 
American Red Cross gave "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" 
for canteen purposes, but they are switched rapidly to this 
use because of the need and because of the good team 
work between Vandervelde and Depage. 

"I'd like a hundred good American stretcher bearers, 
but we can't have them. We will come through without 
them." 

The little Queen went up into all that tangle of 
Houthulst Forest, nursing in the advanced surgical sta- 
tions, and was in places shelled repeatedly. The King was 
with the troops and once came back to find her, meeting 
her at one of the American Ked Cross tents. Neither 
asked the other to go back where it was safer, though both 
were in grave danger. That was the greatest test of all. 

"Thanks to the millions of members of the American 
Red Cross in the United States, we had hundreds of cases 
of bandages, dressings and hospital garments ready and 
our trucks were busy keeping hospitals supplied from 
our warehouses at Adinkerke. A. P. Rice, head of our 
supply service in Paris, wrote on November 8, 1918, that 
he had shipped us 660 cases in October alone — besides 
1,000 pounds of ether and chloroform just sent and a truck 
load of ether and other drugs started over the road. 

By October 19, we were in Bruges. The Belgian Red 
Cross, like the army hospitals moved with the army. 



BELGIAN RED CROSS ACTIVITIES 75 

There was a hospital at Thourout one day and the next 
day in the Ecole Normale of Bruges. Then by November 
5, Depage put an advanced surgical station in an old con- 
vent at Waerschoote, close up to Ghent. 

"Our camions with food and blankets, as well as sur- 
gical supplies and dressings, kept up with the Belgian 
Red Cross as it moved. 

"Waerschoote was the last stand before Brussels." 

Under date of October 25, 1918, I wrote Major Lee, 
our Acting Deputy Commissioner at Le Havre, from La 
Panne, as follows: 

"The time element in this relief work sticks out at 
every turn. It is the instantaneous decision and the bull- 
dog determination and the wild bull kind of rushes which 
succeed in a relief crisis like that which faces us now. 

"I see why Depage is hated and why he succeeds. I 
said to him tonight as I left him at Bruges : 'You are 
sometimes very difficult but also from time to time magnifi- 
cent.' This is one of the times when he shines out, when 
nothing stops him, and he gets the wounded in and oper- 
ated upon and fed and covered with blankets and nursed. 
I see the enormous difficulties of making a new hospital 
He changes his base as the army changes, — quick as 
lightning. He sacrifices any amount of labor already done 
to meet a new condition which has arisen, which was not 
in the situation before. 

"The time element, as I say, sticks out. I like the way 
you realize this at Le Havre and act on it. 1,000 blankets 
when wounded men lie uncovered are more than 1,000,000 
when they are in the hospital, warm and fed. 

"Ten sacks of rice for a new hospital, swept clean by 
the Germans, means more than a shipload in some port 
100 miles away. One hundred tubes of catgut two miles 
back from the front trenches or at some post de secours 
outweighs an order for 30,000 tubes just going in to Paris. 

"It is this catgut, blankets, rice, beans, many-tailed 



76 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

abdominal bandage kind of job that we have been doing 
since the great Belgian offensive. 

"These are the things rushed forward from our stores 
accumulated a year ago for this kind of an emergency, 
placed far forward in an area under fire, while some 
laughed and others expostulated. It is sent up now by 
transport arranged months ago when, with this thing in 
mind, we placed camions in the front area to do evacuation 
work of the people and property in danger and to be 
quickly available for some great hour of need." 

When the King reached Brussels, the war over, the 
American Red Cross did two further things for the Bel- 
gian Red Cross. It placed in the hands of the Queen 
1,250,000 francs to use for the reeducation of the mutiles 
through the Red Cross, and appropriated 300,000 francs 
additional for the purchase of cows, the enlargement of 
the Red Cross farms, and the furnishing of milk and eggs 
to the tubercular. 



CHAPTER XI 

Belgian Army Hospitals 

WATCHING the tumult and the shouting when our 
boys came home, a good lady turned to a lonely- 
looking soldier near her and said, "Are you one of the 
heroes, too?" "ISTo, ma'am," was his reply; "I'm a 
regular." 

It is the regular generally who has the heavy end to carry 
and small credit for carrying it. 

Without the financial backing given to the Belgian Red 
Cross Society, the regular military hospitals of the Belgian 
Army held on through all the hard years and did good 
work. 

When we first went to Belgium, General De Ceuninck, 
Minister of War, invited us to his chateau at Furnes to 
meet General Melis, Inspector General Service de Sante 
or Surgeon General of the Belgian Army, and both asked 
our help in the purchase of mobile surgical units or auto- 
mobile operating rooms to move with the army as it moved. 
An appropriation of 170,000 francs was made for this 
purpose. 

This led to a study of the entire hospital system. The 
three front hospitals were Beveren, Cabour and Hoogstade. 
For a second line, as finally organized, Beveren had a 
hospital at Calais, Cabour, also one at Calais, and Hoog- 
stade, one at Bourbourg, a few miles from Calais. For 
the third line, Beveren evacuated to Villiers-le-see in Cal- 
vados, and Hoogstade to Le Havre. Cabour, which was 
exclusively medical, evacuated to a great many hospitals 
all over western France, for heart diseases, shell shock, 

77 



78 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

tuberculosis, kidney diseases, venereal diseases, and con- 
valescents. 

Dr. Derache, head of the Beveren system of hospitals, 
was a strong man and a brilliant surgeon. Dr. Willems, 
head of the Hoogstade line, another able man, did some 
new and remarkable things in the treatment of joints. 
Dr. Pierre ISTolf, head of Cabour and of all the medical 
service, has become an international figure. He is one 
of the most scientific men Belgium has produced and is 
a trusted friend and advisor of the royal family. He 
dealt effectively during the war with two very bad epidem- 
ics, dysentery and grip, with brilliant results. 

When the war broke out, Nolf was a professor of medi- 
cine at Liege, well known locally. He made his way to 
the army area and took charge of a little hospital for civil- 
ians at Coxyde, only four miles from the front line. Here 
he was discovered by the Queen who saw what remarkable 
things he was doing, and speedily brought him to the at- 
tention of General Melis who took him for the army. The 
Queen did effective nursing at Cabour as well as at La 
Panne, and visited regularly all the front hospitals. 

General Melis, the Surgeon General, had visited the 
United States with King Albert when he was still Prince. 
He speaks English fluently. It would be hard to find a 
more agreeable, kindly companion. He was very con- 
servative and frequently said, "I am a very economical 
man. We are a small country and poor. I want to keep 
you from throwing your money out of the window." So 
he was constantly giving us advice which we appreciated 
about how to make our money and supplies go as far as 
they would. 

He was President of the Belgian Red Cross as well 
as Surgeon General but it was natural that he should think 
less of the great expensive Ocean Hospital with its ade- 
quate equipment, and more of the obscure surgeon of the 
regular army in some remote place who had little to work 
with. 



BELGIAN ARMY HOSPITALS 79 

All of us in the Commission for Belgium shared that 
feeling and we saw quite clearly that the one Red Cross 
job above all others we must do effectively was the charter 
obligation "to help the nations care for sick and wounded 
soldiers in time of war." 

To the following military hospitals under General Melis 
we gave help — all of them were in France except Beveren, 
Hoogstade and Cabour. 

To Beveren we furnished huge packing cases of ban- 
dages, dressings and hospital garments ; to Cabour serum, 
drugs, dressings and on a few occasions supplies of food; 
to Angerville and Auberville near Le Havre, medical sup- 
plies, clothing and recreation equipment for the convales- 
cents; to Bourbourg, an X-ray machine and new piano; 
to Cap Ferrat in the Alpes Maritimes, a barrack, dental 
instruments and 10,000 francs; to Chateau Giron, hos- 
pital supplies; to the Porte of Gravelines, at Calais, 2,000 
blankets and medical supplies ; Le Havre, a recreation hall 
costing 38,500 francs, fruit and candy, and other supplies; 
Le Mans, surgical instruments, food and clothing; Mont- 
pellier, hospital supplies; Paris, beds and garments; 
Rouen, operating table and pharmacy equipment ; Soligny 
La Trappe, cinema; St. Lumaire, supplies. 

When the great advance came in the fall of 1918, and 
hospitals, dressing stations and everything started forward, 
out of our reserve stocks of bandages, dressings and food 
at Adinkerke we helped the hospitals of the army as we 
had those of the Belgium Red Cross Society. 

We supplied through "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers," two 
hundred surgical kits to regimental dressing stations, con- 
cerning which the Deputy Commissioner with the troops 
reported as follows : 

"These kits were carried to the new lines on the other 
side of Houthulst Forest and created a tremendous sen- 
sation because of the great need which they met and be- 
cause of the difficulty of delivery. ISTo single act of the 



80 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

American Ked Cross more quickly showed results in sav- 
ing life, than the delivery of these kits." 

Finally, for these regular army hospitals, back in their 
own country, we bought one thousand beds, twenty hun- 
dred dozen cups and twenty-five hundred dozen plates. 



CHAPTER XII 



The Refugee Problem 



DURING the progress of the war, many thousands of 
people had to decide whether they would flee from 
an approaching enemy or stay at home. 

There were arguments both ways : If they stayed they 
might get killed or be made prisoners. At all events, they 
would have to live under the jurisdiction of the enemy 
and would not be free to communicate with those who 
went away. On the other hand, if they left, they usually 
would have to go hurriedly, leave their property unpro- 
tected, risk death from fatigue or exposure, and perhaps 
live under difficult conditions among strangers. 

If they were moved by unselfish rather than selfish con- 
siderations, they could find arguments both ways. 

In the case of Belgium, everybody, except a few down 
in one corner of West Flanders, had that decision to make. 
Most Belgians decided not to flee. When we hear of the 
hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees, we forget the 
seven million who stuck to their country, Germans or no 
Germans. 

Some who went away went back afterward and looked 
after their little properties. Others who stayed in Bel- 
gium made their way out at risk of their lives to enlist 
in the army or to carry messages or to join members of 
their families. 

Some who stayed might better have gone away and put 
on a uniform, and some who went away and lived at ease 
in England or on the Riviera might better have stayed in 
Occupied Belgium and shared the common lot. But the 

81 



82 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

great majority of Belgians did their duty as they saw it, 
and generally they saw straight. 

Caught between two armies, it is about as safe to go 
one way as another, toward friend or foe, provided one 
keeps out in the open away from buildings or road inter- 
sections liable to be shelled. 

The natural instinct is to flee from the enemy and to 
take shelter in buildings. Both tendencies may be wrong. 

About the only sure thing the relief worker can hold 
to is that the status of the refugee is evil, that people 
ought not to be encouraged to become refugees and if they 
do, not to be encouraged to remain refugees. 

Relief workers in Holland in 1915 saw thousands of 
men sitting smoking in close crowded barracks unable to 
work for fear of upsetting the Dutch industrial conditions ; 
they saw women and children under far from ideal condi- 
tions, at the very best, and these relief workers said, 
"Why is it not the best thing for these people to be at 
home in Belgium, under the Germans ? If they have gar- 
dens they can cultivate them. If they have little houses, 
they can keep them in repair. They at least can earn there 
a part of their support. They will be under their own 
priests and leaders. They will be surrounded by their 
own community standards and bad as conditions may be 
in Belgium, they won't rot morally there as fast as they 
will here." 

So in spite of the fact that Germans might deport a 
few of them for enforced labor in Germany, thousands 
were encouraged to go back into Occupied Belgium, and 
thousands of others went who needed no encouragement 
but who said "Our duty is at home with our own people." 

There is no question that at home they were far better 
off than the average refugee. 

But those who stayed in Occupied Belgium or in the 
part of northern France where Hoover's men operated, 
were better off than those who stayed in those parts of 
Serbia, Poland, Boumania or Russia occupied by the 



THE REFUGEE PROBLEM 83 

Germans, for the Commission for Relief in Belgium fed 
and clothed them throughout the war. 

And yet, thousands who fled died of famine, pestilence, 
wounds or fatigue. One of the great tragedies of the war 
was the death of Serbian boys from 14 to 18 and under, 
sent away from the country when the Serbian Army re- 
treated. They were lost in the Albanian mountains, 
frozen, starved and wasted with disease so that only 5,000 
out of 35,000 survived. 

As Homer Folks says: "This almost complete loss of 
its younger male population is perhaps the saddest in the 
many sad pages in the war history of Serbia." 

Serbia would have been better off to have let those boys 
stay at home. Even the Germans felt the power of world 
opinion and probably would not have conscripted them. 
Some of them .would have starved to death or died of 
disease even at home, but there would have been no loss 
of 30,000 or anything like it. 

If people do run away, then the flight must be con- 
trolled at the earliest possible stage by the country to 
which they are running. An organization must be made to 
sort them. The military authorities must look for spies. 
The doctors must look for contagion. The directors of the 
work must send farm workers to farming regions and 
industrial workers to industrial regions. The army of 
refugees must be treated like an army and conscripted for 
service. 

But they must also be treated like suffering human 
beings in need of sympathy and help. 

The governments of France, Switzerland, Holland and 
England received many thousands of Belgian refugees. 
In 1917, there were probably 250,000 Belgians in France, 
5,000 in Switzerland, 50,000 in Holland and 80,000 in 
England. 

France at one time was spending $14,000,000 per month 
in the care of refugees, her own and those of other nations. 

The American Red Cross in France at one time was 



84 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

spending $1,400,000 a month helping France care for 
refugees. 

The same reasons which impel Us to clean up slums 
in peace time impel us to deal effectively with refugees 
in war time. Leaving aside all motives of brotherhood 
and humanity, though these can't be left aside in any true 
account of the war, refugees have to be cared for or they 
will get in the way of armies, block roads, create city 
slums, breed contagion which spreads to troops, and if 
maddened by hunger, start riots and take troops needed 
elsewhere to put them down. Worse than all this from the 
standpoint of winning a war, what Bakewell says in his 
"American Red Cross in Italy" is true for every fighting 
country : 

"There are wounds besides those made by enemy guns 
that reach the entire civilian population. And every sol- 
dier at the front is linked by ties of affection to those at 
home, his mother, his wife, his children. Their wounds 
are his wounds. If they are neglected, his courage is 
sapped." 

While the wives and children of the greater number of 
Belgian soldiers were left in Belgium, there were many 
thousands who were refugees in France. What kept up 
their courage, kept up the courage of their men in the 
line? 

In work for Belgium, as in work for France, Italy and 
Serbia, this was one of the factors which impelled gener- 
ous appropriations by the American Red Cross for refugee 
work. 



CHAPTER XIII 
Refugees in Flight 

THERE are refugees in flight and refugees settled 
more or less permanently in the country to which 
they have fled. The help needed is different in each case. 
ISTo spectacle of war was sadder than that of refugees in 
flight. 

There were always little trickles of the stream made up 
of the people who went in plenty of time. But when the 
enemy broke through and advanced rapidly or when he 
suddenly started shelling heavily a place heretofore im- 
mune, there came an overflowing stream. It filled the 
roads, and side paths, and spread out over fields. It was 
made up of men, women and children, old people and 
babies, burgomasters, bankers, priests, school teachers, and 
every kind of laborer. The man who had a factory fled 
with his workmen, and his wife, who was the great lady 
of the village, fled with her maids. Some were old or 
sick and didn't go. If the enemy halted and the lines 
were established near them, they were sent back the other 
way and were Belgian or French refugees in occupied 
Belgium or France. If the lines moved on far enough 
these people who stayed in their homes remained there, 
in thousands of cases throughout the war under the law of 
the invader. 

Where those who fled could do so, they started on the 
railway. When they did not, the scheme was to direct 
them to a railway at what was called a rail head — the last 
point toward the enemy that the railway dared run. 

Once on the railway, they came under the jurisdiction 

85 



86 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

of the dejDartment of the French Government which de- 
cided where they were to be sent. 

If they had money, they could generally buy tickets 
on regular trains and shift for themselves. If not, they 
were allocated among the departments of France. 

American Red Cross help began often in the villages or 
on the farm whence they fled. !No conviction that the 
refugee status was evil ever stopped us in helping people 
who wanted to leave. 

Our trucks carried people by the hundred to the rail 
head. Often they worked until Germans entered the vil- 
lage. Once one of our trucks, driven by a Quaker boy, 
got caught between the lines and riddled with bullets 
but nobody was hurt. 

At the rail head, the problem was to furnish sheds, 
blankets, food and medical help for a day or more until 
trains could pick the people up. 

On the trains the work consisted of supervision, cheer, 
medical help and emergency rations. The ideal was 
trucks enough for all the sick, aged, infirm or little chil- 
dren so that they would not have to walk, food and shel- 
ter for everybody, and medical or surgical help to those in 
need — whether on the train or truck or waiting at the 
rail head. That ideal was never realized in work for Bel- 
gium, nor do I believe it has ever been realized in a refu- 
gee rush in the history of the world. 

The number of people, the variety of conditions, the 
amount of anguish, create a situation almost insupporta- 
ble, and a problem nobody can ever be ready to solve com- 
pletely and satisfactorily. 

Children, the aged, and the invalids often died along 
the line of flight, and the well and strong also succumbed 
at times to wounds or hardships. And as every variety 
of age and condition was found among the refugees, every 
variety of experience was encountered. 

They left because they heard rumors or because they 
saw retreating soldiers, or were warned by a burgomaster 



REFUGEES IN FLIGHT 87 

or town major or Red Cross worker, or because shells fell 
around them or even because they saw the Germans com- 
ing. They went on foot, in dog or pony carts, or in huge 
farm wagons drawn by ox teams, splendid Flemish horses 
or even the family milk cows, and in motor cars. They 
took what they could, but often the selection was like 
that which excited people make in case of fire. 

If they had time, they buried silver or money or heir- 
looms of one kind or another, and German soldiers in- 
stalled long enough learned to dig for buried treasure. 

In nearly every group were the family dogs, faithful in 
days of evil report as in days of good report, making often 
a lark out of the migration, and giving one touch of cheer 
to a terribly tragic picture. 

There were cats, chickens, ducks, geese in the proces- 
sion, as well as all the larger animals. 

Great herds of cattle driven ahead of the refugees were 
bought by the government. 

The refugees slept in barns, in their carts, in aban- 
doned houses or on the ground. 

There were exhibitions of selfishness and fear, but the 
prevailing spirit of a refugee rush was one of stoicism, 
courage and marvelous helpfulness. ]STeighbors helped 
neighbors, and a common disaster bound all sorts and con- 
ditions of people together. 

"Nothing is more touching than the kindness of the 
poor for the poor," Jane Addams tells us. 

And nothing is more touching in war time than the 
service of war victims by war victims. 

There were great refugee flights in 1914 and 1915, but 
after conditions on the western front were stabilized and 
the long period of trench warfare began, refugee rushes 
were limited to a few hundred people at a time from 
newly shelled areas. 

When the Germans made their great advance in the 
spring of 1918, we lived 1915 over again. For months 
the Germans had been preparing and both in the armies 



88 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

and among the civilians there were rumors. Two sharp 
German attacks were made March 8 to the north and 
south of Ypres, but were repulsed. General Plummer, of 
the 2nd British Army, whom we had met in 1917, had 
disappeared in a night for Italy, and came hack in a 
night. When the great attack was launched on March 21, 
it started along a front of 50 miles from Monchy to La 
Fere, hut as it progressed and narrowed, it became a fight 
for Amiens. 

Up in Flanders this meant that some of our roads to 
Paris were seized, that British and Belgian Armies might 
be cut off from the French, that the La Panne office of the 
American Red Cross might be cut off from the Paris and 
Le Havre offices. In Paris it meant a great refugee rush, 
for which some of our workers were temporarily detached. 
"In American Red Cross Work for France," by Fisher 
Ames, Jr., this story is clearly told. At the request of the 
Commissioner for France, the Commissioner for Belgium 
agreed to take over all American Red Cross work for 
France north of the Somme, putting it under the La Panne 
office. The Deputy Commissioner at La Panne got up all 
the supplies possible and constantly carried 40,000 to 
50,000 francs about with him. 

Stopped at Amiens and Montdidier, the German High 
Command turned to Flanders. On a line of Ypres — 
Armentieres, they launched a second attack, April 9, 
against the British Army. Again it was a break through 
toward the north and behind us. As Conan Doyle says, 
"The whole front fell in south of Armentieres." By night- 
fall, April 10, the Germans were in Merville where we 
looked down upon them from our quarters in the old 
Hotel du Sauvage at Cassel. 

Every day the attack grew in intensity, and every day 
the refugee flight increased. 

These were the very darkest days of the war. Sir 
Douglas Haig, always calm and self-possessed, issued that 
order of the day which was unlike any other in history, 



REFUGEES IN FLIGHT 89 

when lie said "Every position must be held to the last 
man. With our backs to the wall and believing in the 
justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end." 

It made everybody feel that we might be pushed into 
the sea, but that every foot of ground would be fought for. 
The Germans were then only 40 miles from Calais. If 
they succeeded in covering as much ground as they did on 
the drive toward Amiens, they would reach the coast and 
more. There was no strong natural line to stop them. 
The French came to help, but on April 25, after bitter 
fighting, the Germans took Mt. Kemmel, a wooded hill 
rising 500 feet above the Flanders plain. 

It looked as if all that was left of Free Belgium, as 
well as the whole of the French Departments du Nord and 
Pas de Calais were gone. 

Then we saw preparation, the whole significance of 
which we understood only after the war. We knew that 
the French were preparing to inundate low ground around 
Dunkirk. We did not know that they were prepared to 
let the British pump sea water into the greater part of 
the rich and fruitful Pas de Calais to hamper the Ger- 
mans. It meant giving up one of their richest depart- 
ments for years. The harbors of Dunkirk, Calais, Bou- 
logne were to be wrecked, and blockaded. Railways, sig- 
naling systems, factories, supply depots were to be blown 
up, and dykes and locks were to be cut so that even the 
soil would be inundated and destroyed ; this that Germany 
might not have new bases for submarines and for the in- 
vasion of England. Inundating around Dunkirk with 
fresh water had actually begun before the danger passed. 

The Belgians likewise dug new trenches to make a last 
stand for a few feet of Belgian soil, but it looked as if it 
would be useless work. The German advance overlooked 
Ypres from the south, and the lines were up directly in 
front of Ypres to the north and east. The pincers had 
only to close. We put explosives under our warehouses 
at Cabour and Adinkerke ready to blow them up. But 



90 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

the pincers never closed. The great advance was stopped 
on Kemmel and in the forest of Dieppe. The Germans 
turned south for the third great blow, which fell between 
Rheims and Soissons. 

The Belgian towns of Loere, Drauoutre, Neuve-Eglise 
and other smaller hamlets had been denuded of civilians 
who had fled northward. 

The American Red Cross trucks with the Friends' Am- 
bulance Unit worked night and day to help the people 
away. 

A jolly old priest of Westoutre who couldn't walk, 
was carried back with his faithful nurse to a safe place 
without even his pipe. But he had 50 old $1.00 American 
bank notes, and one or two Canadian bank notes. These 
our agents put into francs for him, and at the same time 
supplied nightgowns, underclothes, tobacco and a pipe. 

A rail head was established at Couthove near Pope- 
ringhe and when shelled moved to Rousbrugge. Over the 
French line others were made at Ebblinghem, and at 
Lumbres near St. Omer for the Hazebrouck area, and 
farther south at Anvin near Heuchin for the Bethune 
area. 

Think for a moment of the authorities concerned in 
moving refugees. On the Belgian side of the frontier 
there were the Belgian civil authorities, the Belgian Mili- 
tary Mission attached to the British Army, and the British 
military authorities. On the French side of the frontier 
there were the French civil authorities, the French Mili- 
tary Mission attached to the British Army, and the British 
military authorities, as this was the British zone. 

A refugee rush implies such an emergency that who- 
ever may be theoretically in control, the strongest man in 
sight actually takes command, no matter what his nation- 
ality. Individual British officers, for example, showed 
great ability and rare tact in dealing with these emer- 
gencies. 

The Friends' Ambulance Unit, a part of the British 



REFUGEES IN FLIGHT 91 

Red Cross, backed up the army authorities as described 
elsewhere. The American Eed Cross furnished supplies 
of food, clothing, bandages and drugs for the rail heads 
and the trains, trucks for the convoy work, and money 
to keep the Friends going. Our men were moving rap- 
idly from rail head to rail head, seeing needs, and getting 
necessary cooperation from French, British or Belgian 
authorities. Along the line of railway in France, at 
Abbeville, at Rouen and other places to the south, Ameri- 
can Red Cross canteens operated from Paris, did a mem- 
orable work ministering to the needs of the sick, weary, 
and often heartbroken refugees. 

At the journey's end, perhaps way down in the Midi, 
American Red Cross workers met them. 

In the closing months of the war, when the Allies were 
advancing, we got refugees from the occupied country. 

On October 14, 1918, in Ypres, six bedraggled-looking 
men and a collie dog led by a string, came down the road 
from Winkel St. Eloi. They had hidden in a cellar when 
the fighting swept over them. When it got quiet, the 
Germans had gone and the Allies had passed over in pur- 
suit. They were the first of the liberated thousands. Most 
liberated civilians stayed in their homes. But in areas 
of fighting, of course they fled. The Germans in retreat 
established a new line on the Scheldt River. From here 
they shelled vigorously the advancing Belgians, British, 
French and Americans. Many populous villages, which, 
for four years, had endured the Germans and never had 
seen a shell, all at once came under fire. As one of the 
Quakers said : "They were freed only to be ruined," and 
it happened in the last two weeks of the war. 

For these refugees, a large hospice was opened at Pope- 
ringhe and villages which were not shelled received them. 
They were not sent into France. The end was in sight. 
At this period wounds and gas made the problem primarily 
one of hospitals and that story is told later. 

Throughout the war, the British took the position that 



92 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

refugee rushes should be foreseen and provided for by 
systematic evacuation of civilians from all the forward 
areas of the army. Both French and Belgians opposed 
this view. 

In February, 1918, the British General Headquarters, 
aware of the impending German attack, again made rep- 
resentation to the French authorities on this subject, but 
got no attention. 

The civilians in threatened areas did not want to go 
and the government was afraid a panic would be caused 
in other areas if they were made to go. 

The British said that civilians blocked roads, harbored 
spys, spread disease and were a continual nuisance and 
impediment. 

The French and Belgians admitted much of this but 
added that they tilled the soil, gathered crops, mended 
roads, ran laundries, and did many other services for the 
army. 

After all, it wasn't what the authorities did or didn't 
do which decided the matter. It was the flat refusal of 
the peasants to go until they themselves decided that they 
had better go, and the reluctance of the government to 
force them. It was one of the few instances in the war 
where civilians held out against the military. 



CHAPTER XIV 



Refugees in Exile 



N the broad sense, the Ministers at Le Havre and their 
families, and all the well-to-do away from Belgium 
were refugees. The middle class people and laborers who 
got jobs and supported themselves out of the country were 
refugees. But in common usage, the word means those 
wholly or partly dependent. To them we confine our 
attention. 

But both dependent and independent were bound to- 
gether by a common anxiety and sorrow for their country, 
by a common sense of the humiliation of exile, and by a 
common hope of return. 

The condition of most of the refugees in exile for long 
periods of time was bad. The status itself was bad. In 
France, where most of them stayed, they faced congestion 
in an aggravated form. Seven, eight or nine persons were 
often jammed into one little dark, insanitary room, and 
for the room they had to pay an exorbitant price. Food 
prices went soaring also and the quality of food went 
down. Sickness broke out among them, and many died. 
Many were separated from relatives. The man was in 
the trenches, or children and parents had been left in 
Belgium. While the French were at first kind, before 
the end the refugees were often made to feel that they 
were intruders, eating bread and taking places that be- 
longed to the French. They were as a rule very clean 
people — proud of their housekeeping, and a refugee status 
was hard on them. 

An intelligent executive who acted as Secretary for 
one of the Ministers, a Belgian who is himself a devoted 

93 



94 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

friend and admirer of the French people, explained why 
the French feeling cooled for the Belgians : 

"First, because most Belgian refugees in France spoke 
Flemish and not French. The French could not under- 
stand them and called them 'Bodies,' the worst word they 
could employ. 

"Second, because the Belgians had large families and 
the French small. 

"Third, because the average Belgian workman did much 
more than the average French or British workman and 
was accused of spoiling the conditions of industry and 
changing standards of work. The British trade unions 
went so far as to ask manufacturers not to employ Bel- 
gians on this account," 

The Belgians were homesick — so homesick that the ex- 
pressions which fell from their lips seemed to echo the 
words of the Jews in Babylon: 

"How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? 
If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand forget 
her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
mouth." 

And French refugees, from northern France, nearly 
all more or less Flemish, felt much the same. 

The French Government with great generosity treated 
Belgian refugees practically as they did French refugees. 
One and a half francs per day were allowed for an adult 
and one franc for a child under 16. They did not get the 
five francs extra per week which special cases of the 
French got for rent, but received a rent allowance of 
fifteen francs a month directly from their own govern- 
ment at Le Havre. The grants to Belgians cost the French 
Government practically 100,000,000 francs for the period 
of the war. Instead of making the Belgian Goverment 
repay this, the French Government canceled the debt. In 
return, the French had the benefit of the Belgian refugee 
labor at a time when both industry and agriculture were 
in great need of labor. 




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REFUGEES IN EXILE 95 

The Minister of the Interior, French, and the Minister 
of the Interior, Belgian, cooperated in the care of Bel- 
gians in France. The French Prefets, Sous-Prefets and 
M aires hore the responsibility for the work, under their 
own Minister. 

The official Belgian agency for dealing with refugees 
was the Comite Ojficiel Beige pour Befugies, organized 
in Antwerp, while the government was still there. It was 
nominally under M. Berryer, Minister of the Interior, 
but acted more or less independently of him, under the 
joint presidency of M. Helleputte, Minister of Public 
Works, and the Count Goblet d' Alviella, Minister of 
State, which in Belgium means Minister without port- 
folio. This Committee had branches in many departments 
of France to cooperate with French Committees and re- 
lieve them in part at least of special oversight of Belgians. 

One of the most intelligent agents of the Committee was 
Ernest Claes, now a Professor at Louvain. Claes had 
fought bravely in the first part of the war, had been taken 
prisoner, had made his escape after almost incredible 
hardships, and in spite of shattered health served his gov- 
ernment most effectively at Le Havre. With Captain 
Ernest W. Corn, Director of our Bureau of Refugee Ser- 
vice, Claes traveled through many departments of France 
to see how the refugees got on. He found most of them at 
work. "In K"imes," he said, "they get fifteen francs a day. 
Many are in bee culture for eight, nine or ten francs a day 
and two bottles of wine. Many have been put in the service 
of the electric tramways. The refugees at Cette work on 
the quai, in the factories of petroleum and chemical prod- 
ucts and in the vineyards. At Toulouse, there is a great 
deal of war industry and salaries are large. At Lourdes 
they are in the munition works and at farming. At Bor- 
deaux they are employed in munition factories, canneries, 
at the wharves, and in the works of the service of supply 
of the French Army. Even women at Bordeaux earn from 
five to six francs a day. In the Lot and Garonne, the 



96 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

refugees work on farms and in a workroom maintained 
by the Committee on refugees to make clothing for dis- 
tribution." 

So it was all over the country. Able-bodied refugees 
had plenty of work. 

There were the old, the sick, the wounded, the children 
who had to be looked after. There were the shiftless who 
had to be made to work. 

Claes spoke frankly about the Belgian Committees. 
The American Red Cross agent at Marseilles said to him : 
"Edouard de Keyser, President of the Belgian Commit- 
tee at jSTimes, is very able and devoted. You can find out 
anything from him." He did find De Keyser petitioning 
the French Prefet to cut off the allocation from Belgian 
refugees who would not work. At Montpellier, he found 
the Chairman of the Belgian Committee so able and honest 
that the French had put him in charge of all refugee work 
in the department. "But at another place," said he, "the 
impression I had after my conversation at the Consulat 
Beige and after having seen the list of persons aided, was 
that relief is given rather easily. The money for refugees 
is received. Therefore it must be given to refugees 
whether they need it or not." 

At X he found an utterly impossible Belgian rep- 
resentative. This representative believed that the whole 
refugee business was held up because he and other Bel- 
gian Committee Chairmen were not made Consuls and 
given authority. He wanted the Committee to address 
formal letters of thanks to all the Prefets and Sous-Pre- 
fets and obtain for them the Order of Leopold. "He 
distributes," said M. Claes, "the subsides that he receives 
with wonderful impartiality. He does not make any dis- 
tinction between the families who are really needy and 
those who are not needy at all. He gives the same subsidy 
to everybody. If he made any distinction, if he gave to 
one family one franc more than he gave to another, there 
would be a great discontent, complaints and M. X — would 



REFUGEES IN EXILE 97 

not like to have that. He thinks this affair of subsidies 
troublesome and so he asks the Comite Officiel Beige not 
to send him any more money. He prefers that the Ameri- 
can Red Cross do not send him a stock of clothing as pro- 
posed by Captain Corn. He did not know anything about 
the 1,700 new refugees just arrived." 

In every department of France, The Bureau of Refu- 
gees of the French Commission of the American Red Cross 
had put agents. These agents had built up an extensive 
organization, were spending hundreds of thousands of 
dollars, finding housing accommodations for refugees, sup- 
plying clothing, running workrooms, getting medical care, 
etc. 

Colonel Bicknell knew all these things when he decided 
positively not to engage in any large way in refugee work 
among the refugees in France. He said that he didn't 
want any American agencies set up which the Belgians 
or French could set up for themselves, that he would not 
have any duplication of the work of the French Commis- 
sion of the American Red Cross, and that he would not go 
into any welfare work for refugees however desirable it 
might be as a peace time proposition, which could not be 
clearly classed as war emergency work . He believed that 
the French had the refugee situation in France well enough 
in hand, and that there was work for everybody, that every- 
body should be made to work, and that we would probably 
find our greatest usefulness in care of children, medical 
work and housing. He believed that all the American Red 
Cross refugee workers could render by far a greater service 
as liaison officers among the different authorities, as inspec- 
tors to detect neglected conditions, as spurs to local agencies, 
as judges of the kind and quantity of supplies needed, and 
even perhaps eventually as experts who could make sug- 
gestions of new methods and better ways. But as far as 
Belgians were concerned, if furniture was to be sold, or 
clothing distributed, or farms operated, or sewing rooms 
organized, he wanted the Belgians to do it, and their 



98 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

desire to do for themselves conserved and strengthened. 
So he laid down these principles : 

"Do not organize American hureaus with American per- 
sonnel except in exceptional cases. 

"Do not help organize any committee for Belgian refu- 
gees except in communities where there is no French Com- 
mittee. 

"Help the Comite Officiel Beige to help special cases 
of distress throughout France, but don't take any special 
cases. 

"Concentrate work on communities w T here conditions 
are clearly bad. 

"Do the things they are not equipped to do and do them 
quickly when you find them." 

Accordingly we gave several cash grants to the Comite 
Officiel Beige and its branches, amounting to 270,000 
francs. Colonel Bicknell had arranged before his departure 
for other important grants, but these were canceled on 
account of the armistice. 

In Le Havre, the Comite Officiel Beige had a local 
vestiaire for t|ie city under Madame Louise Helleputte, 
wife of the Minister of Public Works. To this we gave 
clothing and several small cash appropriations. A branch 
of this vestiaire made layettes for new babies and distrib- 
uted cradles, and we helped to the extent of some 60,000 
francs. 

For the rest of France, M. Berryer, the Minister of the 
Interior, organized a vestiaire under Madame Henry Car- 
ton de Wiart, wife of the Minister of Justice and the 
American Red Cross kept it supplied with clothing and 
paid the entire expense by a grant of 10,000 francs per 
month. Something over 2,000 francs in cash and just 
under 200,000 francs in clothing went to this very useful 
work. 

The Minister of Intendance, or Supplies, M. Vander- 
velde, in 1918, organized a committee called Famille du 
Soldat Beige for work among the wives and children of 



REFUGEES IN EXILE 99 

the men in the Belgian Army. On the distinct understand- 
ing that there would be a careful exchange of records with 
the Comite Officiel Beige and no overlapping, we gave to 
this work a cash grant of 10,000 francs a month. 

This action induced M. Berryer to propose to his col- 
league that Famille du Soldat Beige be merged with a 
work called V Assistance Temporaire which he had organ- 
ized in Paris under the Baronne Beyens, wife of the 
former Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that a 
branch for western France be organized under the presi- 
dency of Madame Hymans, wife of the then Minister of 
Foreign Affairs. As Berryer was Catholic, Vandervelde, 
Socialist, and Hymans, Liberal, the consummation of this 
arrangement showed a fine spirit and good team work. 

U Assistance Temporaire gave emergency assistance to 
hundreds of cases of Belgians whose resources were ex- 
hausted by the prolongation of the war or who had been 
overtaken by some unforeseen disaster. We gave V As- 
sistance Temporaire a cash grant of 202,000 francs, and 
clothing to the value of 50,000 more. 

Work for the civilian population of Free Belgium, Oc- 
cupied Belgium and Liberated Belgium is discussed else- 
where. 

The long list of smaller refugee committees which were 
helped from time to time may be found in the Appendix. 

What visitors to Le Havre wanted most to see was the 
American Bed Cross Befugee Village. Of this Mrs. 
Bicknell wrote in 1919 as follows: 

"In Havre the most desperate single condition probably 
was that of housing. To the overcrowded, insanitary, and 
dark lodgings which refugees were forced to occupy at 
the cost, exorbitant to them, of fifty francs a room a 
month, could be laid many of the evils of disease and fam- 
ily disintegration which all relief agencies were trying to 
benefit. An organization known as the King Albert Fund 
(Fonds du Roi Albert) especially interested in the prob- 
lem of future reconstruction in Belgium, conceived the 



100 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

idea of putting up a model Belgian village outside Havre 
with barracks which later could be moved up into freed 
Belgium as a first shelter for the returning homeseekers. 

"The King Albert Fund was created in September, 
1916, by royal decree and to it the government made a 
grant of ten million francs, only to be apprised that its 
purposes of provisional rebuilding lay without the ends 
to which the money loaned to Belgium by the Allies could 
be devoted. A smaller appropriation was made to this 
work out of one of the small private revenues belonging 
to the government, but it was without the funds necessary 
to build this projected village and applied to the Red 
Cross for aid. Ground was loaned by the owners, and the 
Red Cross agreed to pay 500,000 francs of a projected 
total of 8,000,000 francs. Later this amount was increased 
to 600,000 francs. The building of the houses was en- 
trusted to the King Albert Fund; they were managed by 
the Ministry of the Interior, and title to them vested in 
the Belgian Government. 

"Three months after the work was started the first 
families had been installed in the village of Haut Graville. 
Each house was provided with a small vegetable garden, 
and was completely furnished ; a rent of thirty francs per 
month was charged — where this could not be paid by the 
tenant the expense was met through some charitable source, 
but in no case was the family permitted to feel that it was 
receiving free lodging. By August, forty Families nom- 
breuses — large families — to whom preference was given 
because of their special difficulty in finding lodging in 
the city, were established in this attractive garden village. 
The conclusion of the war made unnecessary the extension 
of the village to the one hundred houses originally planned. 
The other fifty houses were shipped into Belgium direct." 

The Commission to Belgium also dealt with Belgium 
refugees, children and interned soldiers in England, 
Switzerland and Holland as shown in the Appendix to 
this book. 



REFUGEES IN EXILE 101 

"No matter how rigidly it held itself down to the bedrock 
of absolute necessity, the Commission at no time was hard- 
hearted. Every day it realized what Bakewell in this 
account of the work in Italy called "the magnitude, the 
seriousness, the tragedy of the refugee situation," and it 
tried to make understanding, sympathy and friendship its 
greatest contribution. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Children's Colonies 

N" spite of stories of Germans cutting off Belgian chil- 
dren's hands — a thing nobody could ever run down, 
in spite of children bombed, shelled, killed by disease, or 
slowly starved, so much good work was done for Belgium 
both inside and outside the country, that Belgium saved 
more of her children than many of the other fighting 
countries. 

If pestilence started, it was checked. If actual starva- 
tion threatened, food in some way was secured. If people 
slept out a night or so, the condition was temporary. All 
that was hard or terrible or loathsome or cruel which 
ever happened anywhere, happened at some time to some 
Belgians, but very bad conditions never became general. 

Nothing like that which Homer Folks describes for 
Serbia in "The Human Costs of War," happened to the 
Belgians. As Mr. Hoover said in 1917: "Belgians are 
not starving to death. It would be a severe reflection on 
American brains and efficiency, if after all our work, 
they were starving to death. But they are not starving to 
death because we are busy." 

In Trance and in Free Belgium we found all kinds of 
oeuvres or works going on for French and Belgian chil- 
dren. Among them were "Children of the Frontier," 
"Children of the Lys," "Children of the Yser," Le Foyer 
Ecossais of Miss Fyffe, and "Infant Consultations" of 
Madame Haden Guest. By far the greatest number of 
Belgian children outside of Occupied Belgium assisted 
during the war were under the Minister of the Interior or 

102 



THE CHILDREN'S COLONIES 103 

under Her Majesty, the Queen. In the chapter on the 
works of the Queen, the latter will be described. 

Early in 1915, the Minister had taken away from the 
fighting zone some 6,000 children, which he placed in in- 
stitutions which he himself organized and called Colonies 
Scolaires. 

There was no question raised of placing out such chil- 
dren in private families as we are coming to do in the 
United States, for in the first place the number was too 
great and then the time to prepare for them too limited ; 
mass care was the only thing practicable. But further 
than this, Belgium is Catholic, the Minister was Catholic, 
and almost all the children were Catholic, and nobody 
thought of employing anything but the traditional Catholic 
method. Every school or closely related group of schools 
had a priest or aumonier, as he was called. Sometimes 
the director was a priest and always the greater part of 
the work was done by religious sisters. 

There were three main groups of these colonies : 

a. In or around Paris to the number of 3,000 children 
under Senator Empain, a member of the Belgian Parlia- 
ment; 

b. In Normandy, the region of Rouen and Le Havre, 
comprising some 3,000 more, under M. Olbrecht; 

c. In the region along the coast between Dieppe and 
Calais. 

There were scattered groups here and there in France 
and many of the Paris colonies were sent to the south of 
France when it seemed as if the Germans were coming 
into the city in June, 1918. American Red Cross camions 
started to evacuate the children but while the evacuation 
was in progress, the tide turned at Chateau-Thierry and 
so about half the children stayed. 

The Belgian system of decentralized government, strong 
in every little community, in contrast with the French 
centralized government depending wholly on the man 
above, showed results in these colonies. Each colony had 



104 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

its own individuality and employed its own methods. The 
universal principle was illustrated over and over again 
that results are directly in proportion to leadership. If 
the Minister had the right person, man or woman, priest 
or layman, head or acting head in any colony, the colony 
did its work well. Great fussiness over forms of organi- 
zation or mere names was whipped out of us by war, and 
the one question we came to ask was "Is there some one in 
this institution, whether in office or kitchen, who can and 
will run this job ?" 

The colonies comprised usually from 80 to 100 children 
each. Some were larger, some were smaller. The cost per 
capita of running the colonies was at first 70 centimes per 
child per day, but afterward, as prices went up, the cost 
became 1.25 francs per day. It was less in proportion, of 
course, in the larger colonies. To balance this, some of 
the Belgians asserted vigorously that if contagion broke 
out the virulence of the disease was greater in the large 
colonies. It was not simply that there were more cases 
but the cases were more severe. Dr. Rowland G. Freeman 
of New York says that this view is generally held among 
pediatricians of the United States. 

The Liberals and Socialists of the government were al- 
ways inclined to criticize the Colonies Scolaires, not that 
children were not fed, clothed and kindly treated, but 
that the educational methods were archaic. Said one in- 
telligent woman at Le Havre : "Here are four years these 
children are out of regular schools and the time is wasted." 

We have in the United States the teachers who "keep 
school" rather than teach school, and some of the hard 
worked sisters at these colonies, who had little schooling 
themselves, did not run very high grade schools. But the 
children were kept clean, were taught their religion, and 
seemed happy. In some of the schools very remarkable 
work was done in sewing and embroidery. In several, 
beautiful lace was made. All the children were drilled in 
singing and recitation and even gave little plays. No 



THE CHILDREN'S COLONIES 105 

American public schools could equal them along these 
lines. When the Minister or a Bishop or American Red 
Cross man came, there was almost always a reception 
where the children sang and where the visitor was pre- 
sented with a "compliment." A little tot was pushed 
forward who read or recited an address of welcome begin- 
ning "Digne Bienfaiteur" and expressed the thanks of 
the colony for the aid of the American people through the 
American Eed Cross or whoever else it might be. 

To find places in which to establish colonies was a diffi- 
culty. It was met by the loan of chateaux, by taking the 
abandoned buildings of religious orders driven out of 
France, by the French Government giving schools or other 
public buildings, and by hiring or borrowing great summer 
hotels along the coast. 

One of the first things we did was to buy a number of 
cows to increase the milk supply of the colonies. We or- 
dered expensive Normandy cows worth 900 or 1,000 francs 
each, but a purchasing agent in Paris found he could get 
Breton cows for 500 francs each and on the score of econ- 
omy did so. The little wild animals ate heartily and 
gave practically no milk. They had to be resold at a loss 
and the beautiful big Normandy cows took their places. 

We soon saw that some of the colonies needed to be 
waked up with organized play, and in the early days se- 
cured an initial appropriation of 2,000 francs for toys. 
With all of the Red Cross Commissions, toys did their 
part, as well as bread and meat. Footballs, baseballs, in- 
door games, and dolls helped educate the children and 
helped roll back the loneliness and misery which, in 
some colonies especially, always threatened. 

The El Paso (Texas) Chapter of the Red Cross seemed 
to realize all this for in the fall of 1917 they sent $500 to 
buy a Christmas treat for children. It came too late for 
Christmas, but purchased a New Year's treat of cakes and 
chocolate in 33 colonies in which were 3,810 children. 

Far more extensive and important, of course, was the 



106 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

distribution of thousands of dollars worth of clothing to 
these colonies. The nuns were famous needlewomen and 
taught the little girls to sew. Old garments were beau- 
tifully refitted and made over. And both to teach the 
children and to increase the ability of each colony to 
look after its own clothing problem, we bought sewing 
machines for between 20 and 30 colonies. 

Just off the main road from Paris to Rouen at St. 
llliers-les-Bois and some sixty miles from Paris, the 
Minister had a colony to teach agriculture and trades to 
the larger boys. We helped install electricity, the boys 
doing much of the work. This was used for lighting and 
for pumping water. We purchased sheep, pigs, cows, and 
horses, both to stock the farm which gave them their 
support, and to give opportunity for teaching husbandry, 
spending 21,000 francs at this colony. 

At Cayeux-sur-mer up the coast between Dieppe and 
Boulogne, and near the mouth of the Somme, we installed 
three barracks 18 by 100 feet, at a cost of 30,000 francs to 
take care of new arrivals from the front. 

There were many more or less independent colonies of 
children, nominally under the Minister, not counted, how- 
ever, as Colonies Scolaires. 

With two especially, our relations became especially 
close — Wisques and Wizernes — partly because they were 
near one of our main routes to the front, and partly be- 
cause of our friendship for the interesting old man at 
the head. 

The Abbe Delaere, since the war, Dean of the destroyed 
Cathedral at Ypres, was a faithful parish priest in Ypres 
before the war. He stayed through the first attack on 
Ypres in the fall of 1914 and was there during the second 
attack in March, 1915, when Ypres was destroyed. Thou- 
sands of civilians at first tried to stay through the bom- 
bardment, taking refuge in their cellars. Troops and even 
relief workers searching especially for them have some- 
times been deceived into thinking everybody had gone 



THE CHILDREN'S COLONIES 107 

from a shelled town, when in fact, many of the cellars in 
some other part of the town have been full of them. Abbe 
Delaere stayed through the shelling and burning of Ypres, 
giving the last rites of the church to the dying, burying the 
dead, helping survivors get away. He did not go until 
ordered out in person by the Belgian Minister of War, 
and he is said to have been the last civilian to leave Ypres. 
Many tell yet of the tall spare old man with fine scholarly 
face, in long, black cassock, walking back and forth on 
the roof of his church, kicking off falling fire brands to 
save the structure, while German shells crashed around 
and the flames of the doomed city lit up the scene. He 
had a decoration from the King for his bravery. We 
found him in 1917 living in the old chateau of the Counts 
of Wisques, three miles from St. Omer, and some 30 miles 
back of Ypres, but always within sound of the guns which 
kept going at Ypres for over four years. Here he had 
established a refuge for the children of Ypres — the little 
girls in the chateau, and the little boys a mile away in 
some old buildings and under his assistant, the jolly Father 
Dilger and the good Mere Godelieve. He had over 600 in 
all. When we had visitors for the front, we sometimes 
took them to Ypres and then back to see the children of 
Ypres. No pen can do justice to the desolation of the 
old Flemish city, as it was in 1917 and 1918. For visit- 
ors the impression was deepened by British sentinels who 
stopped the car and ordered everybody to put on helmets 
and adjust gas masks. Almost always shells were falling 
in the city or going overhead. Several times visitors were 
killed in Ypres, but luckily none for whom we were re- 
sponsible. It made the British very reluctant to give per- 
mits for the city. When we took into Ypres in the 
spring of 1918 a member of the United States Senate, 
Senator Thompson of Kansas, he had several very narrow 
escapes, both in the city, on the road down from Fumes, 
and on the road out by Vlamertinghe and Poperinghe. Af- 
ter the danger and universal destruction, the empty menac- 



108 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ing streets with pieces of shell all over the pavements, the 
anxiety as to where the next one would fall, the mad race 
down the shelled road, visitors were generally ready for 
anything farther back. What we showed them at Wisques 
was one of the loveliest of landscapes in France, trees dat- 
ing back for centuries, lush meadows, rich gardens, birds, 
bees, flowers, children. They ate generally in the huge 
kitchen of the chateau by the great fireplace in which 
their dinner was cooked, thick stone walls around them, 
served by good sisters who knew how to cook, with appe- 
tites sharpened by long hours of travel and a "thank 
God" in their hearts that they had done it and had come 
out alive. And often for our visitors the good Abbe drew 
from a closet a bottle of the little store of wine he had 
brought out of Ypres when he came. The most rabid 
teetotaler could no more refuse it than he could refuse the 
wine of communion if he were a believer. It was about 
the highest mark of gratitude the Abbe could show. It 
was communion with the old Ypres, the cloth hall and 
cathedral, its happy people, all scattered and many dead, 
that we drank in the wine of Ypres. It was a rite — that 
drinking with the Abbe — the coldest blooded New York 
business men sensed it and were moved by it. And they 
drank with a determination that these things should never 
happen again. 

If there were time, the children sang and recited for 
the visitors, or if it were the play hour, they took them 
into their big circle dancing around the courtyard. Every 
child had a history that was dramatic. Their lives had 
been saved almost by a miracle. One or both parents had 
been killed. We sometimes saw visiting her little one a 
mother who had only one arm in which to clasp the child. 
These little girls at Wisques showed less of the repression 
and more of the spontaneity and initiative which the apos- 
tles of progressive education are talking about. The older 
girls were little mothers for the younger. The good Abbe 
had a group of sisters here far above the average — one or 



THE CHILDREN'S COLONIES 109 

two with normal training — and the Mother Superior had 
both strength and charm. 

The colonies of Wisques and Wizernes nominally un- 
der a work called the Aide Civile Beige actually were in- 
dependent, but were helped by the Belgian Minister of the 
Interior. Their greatest friend and patron was a sober- 
looking English Quaker who was the Adjutant of the 
Friends' Ambulance Unit at Dunkirk, who advised and 
helped the Abbe, and won the hearts of the children as no 
other visitor of any country. He was and will be Vader 
Mordey in Flanders for many years. Wizernes eventually 
had to be evacuated to Jouey-les-Tours, south of Paris, as 
long range German shells and aerial bombs were falling 
around. We thought it a mistake and so did the brave 
Abbe, but those directly in charge of the little lives did not 
want to take chances. 

All told, we helped Abbe Delaere over a period of many 
months to the extent of 115,000 francs. American shoes 
and clothing and food, a barrack for a trade school, money 
for tools, were all sent up in spite of enormous difficulties 
of transportation. And at the end all the children were 
taken back into Flanders and safely installed by the help 
the American Red Cross was able to give. 

Less spectacular, but no less deadly, was the continual 
shelling of Flemish villages in 1917 and 1918, and the 
bombing of towns farther back. 

We bought barracks and secured the Chateau of Recques 
near Montreuil-sur-mer for the Minister and made provi- 
sion for five hundred additional children who were brought 
out in the spring of 1918. The first inmates of the new 
colony were children who had been evacuated once before 
from the villages behind the lines and placed in Calais. 
This was safe for a time but finally the aviators began 
to attack it. One night our Commissioner stayed in Calais 
when there was a severe bombing in which there were 
between 200 and 300 civilian casualties. A bomb fell in 
the yard of the children's colony, breaking glass, wound- 



110 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ing some of the huge trees and frightening everybody. 
Both the sisters and children begged the Commissioner to 
help take them away. Impervious to fear as seemed some 
of the little Flemish children others had been through ex- 
periences which told on them severely. These children at 
Calais knew the power of high explosives and lay awake 
trembling night after night as the Germans came over. 
The Commissioner took measures which resulted in these 
children being moved quickly to Recques where they had 
great woods and lovely fields in which to play. This col- 
ony was made ready late in the war but paid for its cost, 
S 07,000 francs, ten times over. It was one of the colonies 
for which the Red Cross paid all the expenses. After the 
war, the barracks were given to the Belgian Government 
to use in the devastated areas. 

Another project for children much debated and much 
criticized but fully justified by events was the construction 
of a colony in Free Belgium itself within range of enemy 
shell fire, at a little place next the French frontier called 
Leysele. Against the project was the danger of capture 
by the Germans if they broke through behind Flanders 
in one of their many attacks, or moved forward in front. 
Against it also was the danger of a shell falling on the 
colony. For it was the unanswerable argument of the 
peasants that the fields were big and the shells, even the 
greatest, small in comparison, and that there was plenty of 
room for shells to go over ; further that many parents who 
lived in very dangerous places would not send their chil- 
dren into France but would send them to a place nearby 
in their own country. So with the energetic help of Jean 
Steyaert, Commissaire d : ' Arrondissement of Furnes, we 
got up ten barracks bought in Switzerland and shipped to 
Furnes by railway. We put some 150,000 francs into this 
project. The barracks sheltered children but not as we 
had planned. All at once in the spring of 1918, during 
a terrible shelling, over the fields from Furnes, Alvering- 
hem and other places, came hundreds of adults and chil- 



THE CHILDREN'S COLONIES 111 

dren seeking shelter. The colony was used first as a refu- 
gee clearing station and then for some months as a refu- 
gee colony, housing 250 adults and 150 children. Nothing 
was more necessary in the relief field as well as in army 
headquarters than quick change of plans to meet changed 
conditions. We never made of Leysele what we had 
planned, but we made something of it far better for the 
emergency which soon confronted us. 

In this refugee colony we had an outbreak of typhoid 
in the summer of 1918, but it was quickly brought under 
control. 

Nothing more picturesque in children's work could be 
found anywhere than a little children's colony in Boit- 
schoucke among the camps of the soldiers and just back of 
the second line of trenches. General Rucquoy, command- 
ing in that sector, found children who wouldn't go away, 
living in the farms, without schooling. He raised money 
among his officers, secured a couple of barracks from the 
army, an intelligent priest to take charge and opened a 
school which survived all of war's alarms until the shell- 
ing of March, 1918, when the children were quickly sent 
away. This school differed from the others in that the 
children went back to the farms to sleep at night. The 
old rule that the open country was the place of danger 
and the walled town the place of safety, was reversed in 
this war. 

These little children at Boitschoucke did not seem ner- 
vous. They jeered at German aeroplanes when they 
passed over and at the shells high up headed for Dun- 
kirk, and had a thoroughly happy time. The American 
Red Cross put up for them a new barrack for a refectory 
and assembly hall. The school made every visitor throw 
up his hands in amazement, made practically everybody 
object to the Red Cross endorsement of "so dangerous a 
project." But it was another illustration of doing the 
best possible under the circumstances, and not only did 
the children survive, but the Red Cross barrack came 



112 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

through intact although there were shell holes and de- 
stroyed buildings all around it. 

A Scotch lady, Miss Georgia FyfTe, lived at the Belgian 
front for two or three years evacuating children. She was 
brave as a lion, most intelligent, but not amenable to 
military discipline, and was sent out of the army area 
in 1918 by the British. She continued to look after a 
children's colony she had established at ISTeuilly and the 
American Red Cross helped her with two thousand francs 
a month and with clothing to the value of four thousand 
francs more. 

All kinds of children's agencies demanded our help. 

We did every conceivable kind of a thing for a child 
from building a little hospital and dugout for the brave 
Madame Rolin at La Panne, and a creche for mothers 
making munitions at Graville, to great colonies like Recq 
and Le Glandier. 

All told, we spent in children's work $1,159,553.54. 

N/ext to care of the men fighting the battle, comes care 
of the children. 

They are peculiarly endangered by war. Birth rates 
go down, death rates go up, education is interrupted, moral 
standards are lowered. Saving the children for the re- 
building of their country must go hand in hand with help- 
ing soldiers save the country. There is no use of saving 
it if there is to be nobody to occupy it, as there is no joy 
in occupying it if it has not been saved. 




X 



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CHAPTER XVI 

Stories About Children Who Came to Know the 
American Red Cross 

A Little Boy Who Lived in the English Trenches 

GERARD van den BROCE^'S parents had died 
from the exposure and suffering of the first months 
of the war. Their home had been at Langemarck not far 
from Ypres. The father, Constant van den Brocke, was 
the village blacksmith. When the Germans approached, 
the whole village fled together. The van den Brocke fam- 
ily went to Ypres and then on to Reninghelst, a little 
village near the frontier of France. Here the mother fell 
sick and soon died. Within a month the father also died. 
Gerard was then only eight years of age. An aunt and a 
godfather cared for the little boy and he stayed two years 
at the front. The whole country was full of English sol- 
diers who were good to the Flemish boy, taught him Eng- 
lish, carried him about the country on motor lorries, and 
even to the trenches where he stayed whole days at a time. 
He said he liked the trenches and was not afraid of the 
shells. 

Finally, the good C ommissaire d : 'Arrondissement 
learned of the life the little boy was leading and sent 
him away to school at Crichtot, between Havre and Rouen. 
There were no Tommies at Crichtot, but he was in good 
hands. His bright, eager little face, his pride in his broken 
English, his quick comprehension of everything said to 
him explained why the Tommies had adopted him. 

When the El Paso Chapter of the American Red Cross 
sent $500 over for a Christmas treat for Belgian children, 

113 



114 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

about sixty centimes or eleven cents for each boy went to 
Crichtot. The treat was to supplement the regular meal. 
What the boys called for when this donation became known 
were pancakes and chocolate. Good Sister Regina was 
the head cook, a Flemish woman with one of those noble 
faces Frans Hals loved to paint. She stayed up until 
after midnight baking the cakes. 

A short time later the American Red Cross Commis- 
sioner was introduced at the colony as the one who had 
given the treat. He was received with such cheers 
and so touched was he by the sight of the eighty 
little boys who had all come out of the horrors 
of war, that he cast around for a reason for 
another treat. Suddenly he remembered that it was 
March 4. Then and there $10 of Red Cross money 
went into an extra treat. ]STo more cakes made of wheat 
flour were possible, but chocolate and rice cakes were 
ordered to celebrate the day on which the United States 
inaugurates its Presidents. Neither the millionaire 
contributor in the United States nor the woman who earns 
her dollar over the washtubs to give to the American Red 
Cross, would have considered the expenditure foolish 
if they could have seen the faces of those boys, or heard 
them shout Vive VAmenque, Vive la Belique, Vive la 
Croix Rouge Americaine. 

The Story of Martha Comeyn 

One of the older girls of Saussay was Martha Comeyn. 
Quiet, sweet and motherly in caring for the smaller girls, 
modest and self-possessed, it was hard to realize what she 
had gone through in the war. She told me that she was 
born at Reninghe, May 10, 1901, and it brought to my 
mind a night during the period of the fighting when I 
had dinner at Reninghe in a shed. There was not a whole 
building in the village and few half buildings. 

Martha had a father, two older brothers and a younger 
sister. Her mother had died before the war. In August, 



STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN 115 

1914, the younger sister was in Antwerp on a visit. When 
I talked to Martha at Saussay, she told me that they had 
never had a line from this sister. 

When Reninghe was attacked, the father went to Pope- 
ringhe where he continued his business of buying and 
selling horses. One brother entered the Belgian Army, 
the other went to work on the roads near Poperinghe for 
the English Army, until he should be called to the Belgian 
colors. Martha herself went to Dickebusch, not far away, 
to live with her grandmother. 

One day in November, the little girl received terrible 
news. The brother who worked on the roads had been 
badly wounded at Vlamertinghe, between Ypres and 
Poperinghe. He wanted to see his sister and his father ; 
so together they went to the wooden barrack near Pope- 
ringhe that was a hospital. 

The brother had been accustomed, with the other men 
who worked on the road, to go once a week to get his money. 
As the men crowded around the little pay office, a big 
shell came without warning. It made a direct hit on the 
crowd, killing twenty-one. Both of the lad's legs were 
taken off near the body. He lived four days. Martha 
went to see him each day; he knew her and spoke to her 
until the last day, when he did not know any one. He 
was only nineteen. 

After this it became very dangerous at Dickebusch and 
the father sent Martha away. For over two years she 
lived at Saussay, cared for by the White Sisters. With 
the other little girls she was taught to sew and embroider 
by the sisters who were famous needlewomen. Out of 
cloth given by the American Red Cross she made by hand 
many of her own clothes. Then one day a big wagon 
brought from Yvetot a wonderful sewing machine, also 
from the American Red Cross, and she was taught to 
operate it. The months at Saussay did much to make this 
little girl well and strong and to fit her for life in Belgium 
after the war. 



116 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

The Story of Julia de Braeck 

At the Colonie Scolaire of Campeaux, we saw Julia de 
Braeck, twelve years of age, who had been in the colony 
since the death of her mother nearly two years before. 

Her family, the father, mother and two children, had 
fled from Elverdinghe, a badly shelled town, and found 
refuge in Poperinghe, which was less shelled. But any 
shelling is dangerous. One day at Poperinghe, the young- 
est child, a little boy only two years old, ran out into the 
street. At that moment a big shell came screaming into 
Poperinghe and landed with the usual terrifying bang 
and crash. The mother ran out after her boy, when a 
second shell came. It caught her and she was instantly 
killed. But the boy was unharmed. The father was 
away at his work on the road for the English Army. Lit- 
tle Julia got her brother, put him in the house, and then 
knelt in the street by the mangled remains of her mother. 

She smiled when we talked to her, but her face in re- 
pose was sad. The war leaves its mark on the chil- 
dren too. 

She carried a little black bordered card, the kind the 
French and Belgian people use to announce the death of 
a member of the family. It said : 

"Marie Irma Druelle, 

wife of Jerome de Braeck. 

Victim of an enemy's shell, 

21st April, 1916, 10 A. M. 

Be ye also ready for ye know not the hour." 

One of the reasons why the American people kept the 
American Red Cross in Europe was to help just such 
motherless girls. The memories of suffering and bereave- 
ment, the little souvenirs cherished with such care, linked 
up the Belgian children to mothers of children everywhere. 
And so American garments, American food, American 
money went overseas with unstinted generosity to help 



STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN 117 

little girls like Julia come safely through the hard years 
of the war. 

The Bomb Which Killed Six at Fumes 

Up at Furnes I had often seen the ruins of the house 
where one day in July, 1917, a mother and five of her 
children were killed instantly by a German bomb. I had 
seen the father, one of the Garde Civile, standing at his 
post, and had thought of his tragic home-coming jnst ten 
minutes after the pitiful thing happened. Many times I 
had pointed out the ruins to visitors. I had told the story 
as I had told the story of the house at Dunkirk where one 
bomb killed fifty people in a cellar, or of the strong house 
at Poperinghe destroyed in the same way, or of the thirty 
people asphyxiated at Calais. It had been to me just one 
of many horrors. But after a day at the Colonie Scolaire 
at Grosfys Chateau, France, the home of ninety little 
Belgian boys, where I heard the full details of this story 
that concerns Marcel Bedert and. his little brother Odile, 
I could never think of that heap of bricks in Furnes again 
or that lonely policeman at his dangerous post without 
special emotion. 

Marcel and Odile were the only children left of that 
family of Furnes — saved because they had previously been 
sent away to Grosfys Chateau. When I heard at Grosfys 
that there were there, I asked to see them, and two shy but 
attractive little Flemish boys soon came in to the Mother 
tSuperior's room where I was waiting. 

As soon as Marcel, the older boy, understood that I had 
come from Furnes only the day before and knew his father 
and all about the "accident," as he called it, he was in- 
tensely interested. He tried to tell me how the letter came 
with the terrible news and just how it all happened. 

A noble Belgian lady, the wife of the Minister of Jus- 
tice, was with me at the time and translated what the 
boy was saying, although a child's Flemish is not unlike a 
child's English and I could understand many words, 



118 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Finally, Marcel fumbled in his pocket where boys keep 
their treasures and pulled out a little leather pocketbook. 
He unwrapped it, unfolded much tissue paper, and took 
out two little pictures. They were poor pitiful copies of 
family portraits. But they were his treasured remem- 
brances. One was of his mother and three little brothers, 
and the other of his two sisters, a girl sixteen or eighteen 
and a child of two or three years. On the back of the 
picture of the two girls I read, "Pray for the souls of 
Julia and Gertrude Bedert, died July 10, 1917." 

The noble Belgian lady drew the little boys to her and 
said to them in Flemish — and it needed no translation : 
"I will kiss you now for your mother. And for her I tell 
you to grow up brave and good men." 

I took great comfort in the next half hour in every 
evidence I could see of the help the American Red Cross 
had given to the Colonie at Grosfys — the cows which fur- 
nished milk, the sewing machines which made clothes, 
the clothes themselves. And when I saw the ninety boys 
together, I asked them to think of any special treat they 
would like from the American Red Cross. I expected to 
hear "chocolate," but they all shouted "sausages." It 
seemed that there was a special sausage made nearby of 
which they were very fond. "But," said the good sister, 
"the sausages cost twenty centimes each (four cents) ; 
that would be eighteen francs." I said, "Make it thirty- 
six francs and give them each two sausages. And here is 
fifty francs (ten dollars), put the balance in figs" — for 
one little boy had shouted figs. 

The last thing we heard as we left Grosfys Chateau was 
a glad shout for figs and sausages, for America and for the 
American Red Cross. 

The Story of a Boy Who Loved Animals 

Georges van ISTeuville was born at Coxyde, a village 
which lay on the coast, in the little corner of Belgium 
which the Germans never conquered. His father was a 



STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN 119 

fisherman who before the war had made several voyages 
to the coast of Ireland. There were seven children in the 
family and they lived on a little farm. Georges espe- 
cially loved the animals. They had a goat and chickens, 
but their greatest treasure was a cow. Coxyde was so 
near the German lines that the Belgian cannon were hid- 
den about the village and on the farms. Every time a 
gun was fired, there was danger of retaliation from Ger- 
man shells, and on clear days, German aviators were 
overhead trying to locate the cannon. Often they dropped 
bombs. 

None of the children were very much afraid and gen- 
erally they did not run for shelter when they saw Ger- 
man aeroplanes. 

One day as Georges was standing at the gate of the 
barnyard, a German aviator dropped a bomb which struck 
squarely in the middle of the yard. There was a terrify- 
ing crash. Big pieces of iron went flying in every direc- 
tion. Georges cried out, "The goat and the chickens are 
killed." The father ran to his son who was bleeding; a 
fragment of the bomb had almost severed his arm. Yet 
the boy's first thought had been of the tragedy in the barn- 
yard. Luckily, the father was able to get a French am- 
bulance and a surgeon who bound up the terrible wound. 
They took Georges to a Belgian hospital which was lo- 
cated in an old Carthusian monastery at Montreuil. Here 
the boy stayed four months while a skillful surgeon cared 
for the arm and saved it. But he said that it would al- 
ways be stiff and that Georges ought to be taught a trade 
for which he would not need both arms. 

While at the hospital he was overjoyed to learn that his 
own family cow had not been hurt by the bomb which had 
so grievously wounded him. 

At Montreuil also he learned how the American Bed 
Cross was helping his country. He saw the new X-ray 
machine and the new electric lights which the Red Cross 
had installed there. He heard how the Red Cross had 



120 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

bought animals of all kinds for the Belgian colony of 
older boys at St. Illiers farther back in France, and begged 
to be sent there "to learn all about animals." At last this 
was done. He turned out to be one of the best boys of 
the school. Though he had a withered arm, he had such 
love of all the dumb creatures and such understanding 
that he could do more with them than most boys who had 
two good arms. 

All this time the father stayed at the front, exposed to 
the shells of the Germans. "Because of the cow," said the 
director of the school, "to which he is greatly attached 
and which he refuses to sell, he will not leave his farm." 

It was a happy day for father and son and all the fam- 
ily scattered far and near when the armistice was signed, 
and when, with American Red Cross money, Georges and 
thousands of other little boys and girls were sent back to 
Belgium. 

The Story of Vincent Nare 

Vincent Nare, a little boy of six, lived with his father 
and mother and sister at Ypres. The father was a gen- 
darme. Standing at his post one day during an air raid, 
a piece of bomb struck him in the side. For four months 
he lay in Countess van den Steen's hospital at Poperinghe ; 
then he died. The mother stayed on, living as best she 
could, doing washing for the troops, until the first day of 
the shelling of Ypres in April, 1915. During the height 
of the bombardment, just as she had taken little Vincent 
in her arms to comfort him, a great bomb came with a 
screech and bang and crash, smashing the house. It be- 
headed the mother, but left the child unhurt, drenched in 
his mother's blood. 

English Quakers quickly came and took little Vincent 
away. They turned him over to the Abbe Delaere, whom 
the American Eed Cross was helping at Wisques. There 
he found a second home. 
Multiply this story ten thousand times, not always with 



STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN 121 

such gruesome details, but sometimes with more gruesome 
details, and you have the child problem of the firing line. 

The Story of the Little Girl Who Died of Fear 

Sometimes the children jeered at enemy aeroplanes, but 
at other times sensitive children suffered agonies of fear. 

Gertrude Decrock lived at Poperinghe just back of 
Ypres. Her father kept a small inn and a smithy. Her 
oldest sister Gabrielle, who was only eleven years of age 
when the war broke out, helped the mother care for Ger- 
trude, her three brothers and the baby sister. 

Back of the house was a large garden. A bomb from an 
aeroplane fell in this garden while the children were there 
at play. Gabrielle and the three boys fled to the kitchen. 
They did not at first see that the little baby sister had been 
wounded and that both of her eyes had been put out. Nor 
did they see Gertrude for some time. She was so fright- 
ened that she lay where she had fallen in a hole in the 
garden. They had to go and pull her out. 

Then all the children except the baby were sent away 
into Trance — the boys to St. Obain, Gabrielle and Ger- 
trude to the lovely old chateau of Saussay. 

While Gabrielle grew strong, Gertrude steadily became 
weaker. 

As the good Mother Superior said, "Gertrude was al- 
ways sad and always afraid. If the door slammed, she 
came to me quivering with fear and clung to my robe. 
She was afraid to go out of the house, even with the nuns." 

If the wind blew, or if it rained, she was terrified. 

The Mother Superior put her into a little room adjoin- 
ing her own, but often in the night she cried out: "J'ai 
peur." ("I am afraid.") She curled herself up in bed to 
make herself as small as possible. She ate less and less 
and after five or six months at Saussay, she died of fear. 
She was one of the martyrs of the war. 

The American Red Cross helped save thousands. The 



122 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

story of Gertrude Decrock is typical of the lives of other 
thousands no human power could save. 

The Story of a Little Girl Caught Between the 
Fighting Lines 

On the coast in a little village called Petites Dalles, I 
made the acquaintance of a fourteen-year-old flaxen-haired 
Flemish girl, named Jeanne Beuneken. One day she told 
me her story. It showed how suddenly the war had come 
to the simple peasants who knew little of world politics, 
how much they endured, and how some of the children 
came through terrible experiences comparatively un- 
scathed. 

Jeanne lived with her parents and brothers and sisters 
in the village of Comines ten Brielen. Mounted Ger- 
man patrols, the Uhlans, appeared in the village one noon 
without warning. The children were in school and were 
sent home. Almost immediately Germans and English be- 
gan fighting in the village and neighborhood. Bullets 
whistled through Jeanne's house and neighboring farm- 
houses began to burn. All ran to the cellar. There they 
stayed until darkness came. 

As Jeanne told the story of that night, it was very dra- 
matic: "The English came," she said, "to tell us that 
we had better fly toward Ypres. My mother took the baby 
Maria in her arms and started with us out of the door, 
but immediately she was hit by a bullet in her shoe. We 
went back to the cellar. My father and the servant were 
going all the time from one door to another to see if they 
were not burning our house. All at once father saw that 
they were trying to put fire on our neighbor's house, but 
that it would not burn. Then the Germans came to our 
house and in two or three minutes all was burning. The 
cattle were in the stable and we could not save them. We 
went away quickly, unable to take anything with us. 
Mother had baby Maria, father was holding my brother 



STORIES ABOUT CHILDREN 123 

Simone by the hand, the servant had my sister Yvonne, I 
was holding my little -sister Blanche's hand. But mother 
and Blanche had on wooden shoes and Blanche kept losing 
them off. I was crying because I had to go back in the 
dark to find them ; I was so afraid of the Germans. Then 
we lay down in the ditch to escape the bullets. Nobody 
could sleep. All the night we saw our house burning and 
were hearing everything — the birds and cows and pigs — 
shrieking while they were burning. It was so very sad to 
see and hear and very hard to bear. 

"At midnight," she said, "the bullets came from both 
sides and hit the wire near our feet, but we were not 
struck." 

In the morning they were so stiff and cold that they 
could hardly walk, yet they took the road toward Ypres. 
How they slept under hedges, and in barns, how good peo- 
ple took them in at Ypres, how there they got the sad 
news of the death of relatives, how Ypres was shelled and 
they had to flee again; how her parents at last found a 
refuge at Steenvoorde and how Jeanne with her little 
brother and sisters was sent to one of the Colonies 
Scolaires — all that she told so simply and naturally that 
day at Petites Dalles. 

I said to the Mother Superior : "If soldiers should be 
decorated for crawling out into No-Man' s-Land to get im- 
portant news, or for rescuing wounded comrades under 
fire or for other feats of valor, so should a little girl be 
decorated who obeyed her mother's order and went back 
through the darkness, under fire, toward the enemy, to 
get her sister's wooden shoes, even though she cried with 
fear as she went." 

Said the good Mother Superior, "Only God knows the 
true story of heroism in this war." 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Children's Own Stories 

BEFORE the war ended, I asked some of the refugee 
children to write out the story of their experiences. 
These children were in colonies, taught by nuns, subject to 
school discipline and as witnesses exposed to direction and 
prompting not always intended as such. But children are 
keen observers and among the thousands we met we found 
many whose contributions show originality and are of 
value in giving flesh and blood to the bones of the history. 

All of these children were in schools supported entirely 
by the American Red Cross or receiving something at 
our hands. 

There were two main classes of children. There were 
those who fled before the Germans, sometimes even after 
they were in the village, and many of these children saw 
death in its most horrible form, parents or playmates killed 
and homes burned. Sometimes they were even caught 
between the lines of battle. 

Then there were children who lived under the Germans 
in Occupied Belgium and who were brought out in 1917 
and 1918 by the American Red Cross cooperating with 
the Queen or the Minister of the Interior, to be fed and 
taught in France. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 

By Andre Braem 

I lived at Voormezeele in western Flanders. My 
father, Aloise Braem, and my mother, Emma Beele, were 
butcher and coffeehouse keeper. 

124 



THE CHILDREN'S OWN STORIES 125 

At the beginning of the war I saw German soldiers 
going everywhere to ask if there were any spies about — 
they also came to our house to have bread, meat and but- 
ter, as well as straw, hay and oats for their horses. 

I heard that many people, mostly young men, had been 
taken and wounded or killed with bayonet thrusts. Others 
were obliged to work for our enemy until completely ex- 
hausted; many died of bad treatment. The Germans be- 
lieved them to be spies, we were told. 

I got so sad and afraid with the bombardments, that I 
fell ill and had to stay in bed six weeks ; when I was better 
I had to take a refuge with my brothers and sisters in our 
cellar, for shells were falling everywhere. Finally, the 
danger was so great that with sorrow we had to leave our 
village and go a little farther to Dickebusch. Near our 
house two women who were coming back from their work 
were killed by the explosion of a shell and four other per- 
sons of our village lost their lives. Most of the houses have 
been burned or destroyed. 

After a little time spent at my mother's sister's at 
Dickebusch we went to some friends of ours at Westoutre, 
but there again we were bombarded and were obliged to 
return to Dickebusch where it was less dangerous. There 
my poor father died of a grave illness. 

I asked my mother to let me go to the children's colony 
of Bacqueville and I had been there a short time when 
very sad news came to me: my eldest brother who had 
worked for the English got hit by a shell as he was getting 
the money he had earned ; he lost both legs and arms and 
died soon afterward. 

Then my mother asked if I could be sent to a profes- 
sional school, and here I am at St. Illiers-les-Bois. 

My mother now keeps a little shop at Reninghelst. 

(Signed) Andre Braem, 
St. Illiers-les-Bois, Seine-et-Oise, March 7, 1918. 



126 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

STORY OF THE WAR (At the Front) 
Translated from the Flemish by Madame Carton de Wiart. 

I am A. Scheldeman, the son of H. Scheldeman, born 
at Dickebusch from workmen people. I have four brothers 
and five sisters. In October, 1914, thousands of Germans 
arrived at Dickebusch. They took all they could: horses, 
cows, pigs, hens, etc. 

In March, 1915, I was walking out with a friend, and 
on our way we were playing together when suddenly a 
bomb fell and exploded near us. My little friend was at 
once killed. A bit of iron had touched him on the chest. 

On a Sunday of the same month my mother and I were 
walking together when I was suddenly touched on the 
laiee by bits of shrapnel. 

Happily, I am now in a colony, where I go to school 
and learn reading, writing and arithmetic. 

HORRORS OF THE WAR, 1914 

By Maetha Beiees 

Translated from the French by Madame Carton de Wiart. 

The war. What a terrible calamity. How people suf- 
fered during those sad times. Germany declared war to 
France, to Belgium also it appears, but the people hope; 
everybody says: "Do not worry." One week or two 
and it is done. Some days after the sad news the people 
is moved, everybody is in the windows. . . . 

What is it ? It is the Belgian soldiers starting for the 
front. First there came the horses with their gallant 
riders — then the other soldiers walking behind them. 
What a charming sight. I remembered it long afterward. 

One day we heard a big noise. What is it now ? There 
are the Belgians, the famous defenders, who are blowing 
up a bridge on the Meuse. The Belgians do you ask ? Yes 
the Belgians, but with a good intention, believe me. It is 



THE CHILDREN'S OWN STORIES 127 

because the Germans are after them and having passed to 
the other bank, they blew up the bridge. 

However, the Germans by another bridge pass on to the 
other side of the river — they enter the town. How dread- 
ful they look in comparison with our dear soldiers: ugly 
grey uniforms — hard faces! They occupy our soldiers' 
barracks and the Governor's palace and he can go where 
he likes. Some time later they began to shell the town. 
In the middle of the night we were obliged to take shelter 
in the cellars and the gardens. 

Then they forbid selling liquors to their soldiers. They 
went to visit a tobacco factory and counted how much the 
workers were doing in a given time and nearly all was to 
be done for them and they bought it at a low price. In 
another factory they took away all the machinery and sent 
away the workmen but some days later took them back on 
condition that they would work for the Germans. 

Now the price of bread is higher. They organize a 
rationing where the bread is less dear — they employ the 
town bakers but if the town bakers work for the rationing 
they cannot do it for the clients. Flour is scarce and we 
are more and more rationed as the Germans keep the flour 
for themselves, the misers. People grow hungry and it is 
impossible to get bread as the bakers have no flour, and 
other food is too dear. The Germans forbid the sale of 
potatoes. What are we to eat ? After having well thought, 
people began to eat rice. We put it in the soup. We eat 
it with milk and sugar. 

Big shopkeepers seeing that sugar was in demand, hid 
it to ask a high price for it and people were again reduced 
to hunger. The shopkeepers made believe that they had 
no more and were able to sell their goods at a very high 
price. Later on the Germans required everybody aged 
more than 15 years to have a card of identity and threat- 
ened with the most awful punishment people who went out 
without that card. When one was obliged for a serious 
.•ase to go to a neighboring town, one was obliged to go and 



128 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ask a pass at the German Kommandatur when he had to 
wait for hours. 

The Germans at first obliged children to go to school, 
but now forbid it as there is no coal to give, but they rob 
the children of their leather cases when they come from 
school and employ them to mend their soldiers' shoes. 
Now there is something more the Boches want. Do you 
guess? It is copper to make their bullets. To obtain it, 
they order by a decree to bring to the Kommandatur all 
the copper there is in the houses, but it does not please 
much the population and very few obey. They guess 
easily that there is more in the town than what is brought 
to them. Oh do people hope to deceive them ? Well, they 
send soldiers in the houses to search and they take what 
they found. But learning that, the people went to work 
to hide it in the garrets and in the cellars and buried it in 
the gardens. But the Germans guess and search the houses 
more seriously, going from loft to cellars, opening chests of 
drawers and everything and taking away even the food. 

I finish here, having nothing more to tell about the 
Germans. Those who will read this will have a very faint 
idea what they made us suffer. 



STOEY BY LUCIEN LEFEBVKE 

Translated from the Elemish by Madame Carton de Wiart. 

We lived peaceably in the village of Ploegsteert and 
were dwelling in a coffeehouse. I had four brothers, two 
of them worked in a factory. Unhappily my father died 
quickly, when all at once the village bells announced the 
war. 

That morning the village looked sad. There was no- 
body in the streets. One morning there arrived a small 
troop of eight Prussian Uhlans in the village who took 
possession and established themselves at every street cor- 
ner, but the French were at Armentieres very near our 



THE CHILDREN'S OWN STORIES 129 

village and some of them arrived, hiding themselves he- 
hind the houses, and then full of courage assailed the Ger- 
mans who ran away on every side, sending some shots at 
random and hiding in the ditches or behind a small bridge 
over a ditch. 

In that little skirmish there were two men killed, the 
Trench and the German officer. The French made a pris- 
oner who surrendered. As we had been told of the Ger- 
man atrocities and as they had been fighting in our village 
we thought they will revenge themselves on us. 

Our mother and we started towards Armentieres, but 
as we could find nowhere to stay we came back the same 
night through the German troops who had taken the vil- 
lage. As our house was a coffeehouse, the German sol- 
diers came to drink beer and liquor, but they did not pay. 
It lasted three days and three nights. 

Then came our Allies, the English troops, better re- 
ceived than the former. There came first three bicyclists 
and then the others. When they came we cheered them 
and gave them sweets and beer. It is some days later that 
the famous bombardment began; at the beginning we ran 
away, but as it was going on we took refuge in our cellar, 
which was not very strong but good enough to preserve us 
from the bursting of the bombs. We stayed under that 
bombardment without any ill coming to us during nearly 
a year. But on a Sunday as we were seated to dinner 
bombs fell. We ran to the cellar with other people who 
were in the coffee room and three bombs fell at one or 
two meters from our house and killed some people, but 
none of us. We ran away through the village in the coun- 
try and stretched ourselves on the ground. We heard the 
whizzing of the bombs which fell near us. My friend had 
his head cut and other people were seriously wounded. 
My little brother had his forehead wounded and I had my 
ear taken away. British soldiers took me to the hospital 
where I was nursed. When I was well again I went back 
home out at Pont de Nieppe. 



130 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

While we were there we heard that children were taken 
to the colonies, so my brother and I joined them. 

Now some months ago my mother came to Darnetal with 
my brother. My two eldest brothers are soldiers, one is a 
corporal. The one who is with my mother will have to go 
soon with the next class as he is 18 years of age. My 
little brother and I, we are at the Colonie de St. Jacques 
sous Darnetal. 

NARRATION OF THE WAR (At the Front) 

By Marcel, Victor 

Translated from the Flemish by Madame Carton de Wiart. 

When the war broke out our happy family counted five 
children, two sons and three daughters. We are still all 
alive in spite of all the misfortunes we had. 

It was about the 30th of November, 1914, that the un- 
expected arrival of the Germans obliged us to leave our 
house. The shells were falling without interruption and 
some houses were already set on flames. We came back in 
our house in the evening as the danger had diminished. 
So we passed still a few days during which we saw many 
calamities around us, though were spared. 

On the 7th of June it was a beautiful, warm day. We 
went, my brother, my eldest sister and myself, to Belle 
(hospital) to fetch some provisions. 

When we came back we could see from far that our house 
was aimed at by the bombs which fell without ceasing. To 
keep from danger we waited afar off to see the shells fall- 
ing when suddenly we saw with terror that a bomb had 
smashed the house. Frightened, not knowing what to do, 
we made up our minds to go quickly, at the thought that 
our parents and sisters were perhaps still there. 

We found nobody in the house. Looking in the neigh- 
borhood we discovered them at last in a public house, but 
good heavens, in what an awful state. . . . 



THE CHILDREN'S OWN STORIES 131 

My mother, stained with blood, placed in an arm chair, 
was grievously wounded. My father, slightly wounded at 
the head, held inanimate my little sister in his arms. The 
energetic care of English doctors brought them all to life 
again, but it was not all. A few months after, my 
brother was severely wounded in the leg and he got better 
only after five months' hospital care. However, the poor 
boy will be lamed for the rest of his life. 

Since that moment, our dear parents did all they could 
to spare us from that danger. On the 27th of May, 1916, 
my two eldest sisters and I were accepted in a Belgian 
colony in France. We are there since twenty months and 
are very happy. We will do our best to behave well so as 
to prove our gratefulness to those who have procured us 
such a good life. 

THE STORY OF MARGARET VAN CROMBEKE 

Translated from the French by Mrs. John 
van Schaick, Jr. 

I am a little Belgian girl, twelve years old, and I live 
Avith the White Sisters in the chateau of Saussay in 
France. Before the war, we lived on a little farm at 
Passchendaele in Belgium. I had a father, mother, one 
brother and five sisters. We all worked hard, but very 
happy together. 

Then one day my father said that the Germans were 
coming and that we must go away. We took some bread 
and started on the road to Ypres. My father could not go 
with us as he wanted to do some work. He said he would 
come to Ypres the next day, but the Germans caught him 
and he never came. 

We were very tired that night and we did not have any 
place to go. Everybody was running around in Ypres and 
many people were going away. After it got dark, a man 
told my mother we could stay in his barn. There was a 
little hay and we slept on that. The next day we went 



132 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

to Reninghelst where my aunt lived. She was very kind 
to us and we lived with her for a year. My mother did 
washing for the soldiers and my sister found some work 
mending uniforms. My two little sisters, my brother 
Jan, and I went to school every day out a little way into 
the country. We often wrote to my father but never had 
any letter from him or never heard anything about him. 
We were quite happy here except for our worry about 
father until the awful accident happened to my little 
brother. Mother always told us not to come along the 
road if the Germans were shelling. She said we should 
go off in the fields and wait there. And so many times 
we were late coming home. I was afraid of the shells at 
first, but we got used to them. They did not come very 
often then. But one day I stayed at school and Jan 
started home with another little boy. They were just 
passing the little woods near the village when a big shell 
came. They didn't have any time to run. It struck by 
the side of the road near by. And my poor little brother 
was hit by a big piece in the neck so that his head was 
almost taken off. The other little boy was hit in the arm 
and ran home crying. Some men came and carried my 
brother home. When I came mother was sitting by him 
and she said, '"'Margaret you must go away. I won't lose 
you too." 

Then the Mayor of Reninghelst came and said he would 
write to the Commissaire d'Arrondissement. The next 
week they took me to Adinkerke and put me on a train 
with twenty other little girls and brought me to the 
Colonie Scolaire here at Saussay. My mother came away 
the next week and brought my two little sisters with her. 
She is working at Lieuvillers and writes to me every week. 
She often says how happy we will be when we can all go 
back and find my father and be in Belgium once more. 

(Note: Through the Minister of the Interior we made 
generous appropriations to take these children home soon 
after the armistice.) 



THE CHILDREN'S OWN STORIES 133 

WRITTEN BY MARIE GILISSEN, A GIRL WHO 
LIVED UNDER THE GERMANS 

Translated from the French by Madame Carton de Wiart 

Whilst this horrid war went on many families suffered 
from hunger. At the rationing we had 333 grams of black 
bread each and some soup. Sometimes we were given 
sugar, honey brickie, and seldom rice, cerealine and po- 
tatoes. 

In the morning we had only two small slices of dry 
bread and had not even a little wet grease to put on it. 
At 12 o'clock we had rutabagas, beetroot or turnips, and 
at tea time we got nothing at all except sometimes a little 
soup given by the commons. In the evening we had ruta- 
bagas again and very often we went to bed without any 
supper. 

About the month of October, 1917, we were obliged to 
go away to Switzerland. A week before starting some- 
body came to take our measures for cloth. On the Tues- 
day, October 9, we went to fetch a loaf of bread as we 
were told to take food for three days with us. 

We were told to be at 2 o'clock at the Convent of the 
rue Cockerill. There they gave us two eggs and some 
sugar from the committee. When we had put on our 
armlets we left Seraing and went to the bridge to take 
the tramcar to go to the station to embark. Our parents 
came with us to the Guillemins. We entered the train at 
4:30 and only went on from Liege at midnight. At Co- 
logne they gave us soup with rutabagas, beetroot and 
stewed apples with honey — quite a German mess. The 
same night at midnight we stopped to eat again. It was 
better than at Cologne; we had soup that was not very 
good and a small piece of bread all black, but we had to 
eat it as we had not much food. At the frontier they 
searched us, thinking we had some addresses with us, but 
we had been cleverer than they thought and had learned 



134 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

them by heart. There they gave us some slices of black 
bread with a bowl of coffee with milk. After two more 
hours we stopped down again, but we were well satisfied as 
it was to take the Swiss train. In that train we got two 
rolls of bread with ham and chocolate. On Friday, Octo- 
ber 12, we arrived at Fribourg in Switzerland after seeing 
the Rhine falls and going through the St. Gothard. 

We went to the Belgian soldiers' barracks and were 
received there as little princesses. 

After two days at Fribourg we left after going to church 
and went to the station to take the train to Evian-les-bains, 
where we were well welcomed. After Evian we went to 
Paris; we had a good dinner: soup, potatoes, beefsteak 
and salad and grapes for dessert, and we went to the 
cinema. After Paris we went to Rouen ; we arrived very 
late and had for our supper soup, bread, potatoes and egg, 
jam and cakes and we went to bed after. 

The next day we started to Yvetot where we were well 
received too. On the Thursday, October 18, we came in 
a motor car to Valmont where we are still. The ladies 
and sisters are very good to us ; we go to school as we did 
at home, but we are separated from our dear parents. 

Long live the good ladies of the colony of Valmont. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Works of Her Majesty, the Queen 

TO her work in the Belgian Red Cross Society with 
Dr. Depage, and in the field of preventive medicine 
with Dr. ISTolf ; to her constant visiting of all the front 
hospitals,* and her dressing of wounds with her own skill- 
ful hands; to her patronage of all works of amusement 
and education for the soldiers and her frequent trips to 
the trenches; to all the miscellaneous tasks piled upon a 
Queen even in war time, Her Majesty added constant, in- 
telligent and sympathetic work for children. 

She was always going to and fro, in her little corner of 
Flanders ; she was always hearing everything that went on, 
she knew as well as anybody what was the next impor- 
tant thing to do in relief. 

As she would not be driven out of Flanders herself, she 
sympathized deeply with the other people who did not 
want to go away into some other country. So did the 
King. Both admitted all that the military strategists had 
to say about it, but both contended that there was a moral 
value to the cause of the Allies in having even a corner of 
Belgium unconquered. So some kind of civil administra- 
tion was kept up all through the war, and the King and 
Queen went to their burgomasters as they did to their Gen- 
erals with their encouragement and their thanks. 

This did not prevent the Queen from starting early to 
send children into France. Whether her own agents picked 

* In 1917, we established "the Queens Purse," a fund of ten 
thousand francs a month for fruit, flour, jellies, and extra com- 
forts distributed personally by Her Majesty to wounded men. 

135 



136 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

them up or Miss Fyffe, the Scotch lady, or Steyaert, or 
Biebuyck, the Commiss aires, the little Queen was at the 
station at Adinkerke to see to their comfort and to wave 
good-byes when they went off. 

But early she faced what we faced later — the fact that 
the parents of many of the children would not let them go. 
She looked about to see if there were any place in Flan- 
ders where she herself could establish a colony, and make 
it a model of its kind. Queen though she was, she en- 
countered the strongest kind of opposition, even from 
some of the officers of the King's household. They knew 
the range of artillery and the uncertainties of war, and 
they did not want the Queen put into a position where 
a shell on a barrack could cause a slaughter of children 
for which she would be held responsible. Her Majesty, 
for all her soft voice and gentle ways, has very positive 
views and a way of holding on to them. And as for shirk- 
ing a duty because the thing might go badly and react 
on her, this is a thing unlikely to ever happen in her life. 
She is too true a woman. She held fast to the necessity 
of the action she proposed, and she raised the money. 
When it came to the almost awful question of just where 
to put it, of deciding where shells would not fall, she got 
the best advice she could and then acted. The site was in 
the open country, close to the frontier, and near Vinckem 
where Dr. Depage later built his big hospital. One of the 
barracks was contributed by citizens of Paterson, N\ J., a 
thing the Queen always pointed out with pride. 

In two little villages of wooden barracks, the Queen 
provided for 600 children — one group of children from 6 
to 10, and the other from 11 to 16. 

The barracks were well placed, on soil well drained, flat 
though it was, and around them bloomed the most beautiful 
flowers from early spring until late autumn. Between the 
two groups of barracks was a large vegetable garden which 
the older boys helped to work. 

The barracks were light, well but simply furnished, and 



THE WORKS OF HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN 137 

everything about them showed that somebody of taste and 
culture was at the head. 

The Queen was fortunate in having the pick of availa- 
ble personnel and this made other authorities growl occa- 
sionally, but the growls were low and not very deep. Cer- 
tain it is that whether we ascribe it to her brains or luck, 
Her Majesty made there a real school. A beautiful little 
chapel stood among the other buildings. The instruction 
was modern. The children really learned something. 
And the whole atmosphere of the place unquestionably 
lifted most of them up to a plane they never would have 
reached had there been no war and no school of the Queen. 
Twice during the war, we tried to get over from America 
the most modern books on education for a present to the 
Queen out of other than relief funds, as we knew her 
great desire to have them, but the shipments had not come 
through when the war ended. 

There is no question so bitterly fought over in Belgium 
as the education of the children. Both King and Queen 
have to keep themselves above party strife and to be the 
representatives of all the people, but few projects for the 
future interest them more than the raising of standards 
of Belgium schools of all kinds. 

The Queen's schools at Vinckem were an object lesson. 
Towards them we contributed 101,000 francs. 

Her Majesty had kept in touch with conditions in Occu- 
pied Belgium as much as was possible. She could look 
over from where she lived or from the tower at Fumes, or 
from observation points on the line, and see beyond the 
German trenches the towers at Bruges or Ostend. And 
word came out this way or that. When we first met her 
in 1917, she had become convinced that she ought to try 
to get out the most undernourished children and feed 
them up in France or Switzerland. The Hoover Commis- 
sion was keeping people going and the baby work in Brus- 
sels was so good that infant mortality rates were being 
lowered below pre-war rates ; reports from Liege and other 



138 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

industrial districts were not so good. But it was more 
than a question of food. She considered it demoralizing 
to have the children so long under the hard conditions of 
German occupation. Once more she had in mind the 
future citizens of Belgium. 

So under her patronage and in cooperation with her, 
we established early in 1918 a colony for children at Le 
Glandier, in Correze, France. 

Her Majesty chose Captain Charles Graux to be her di- 
rector and here the one man indispensable to a project 
was found. Captain Graux was the son of a former Prime 
Minister of Belgium, an engineer, a manufacturer, and a 
cultured gentleman. From his English mother he had 
got full command of the English language. 

Arrangements with the Germans had to be made for the 
children to come out through Switzerland, arrangements 
with the Swiss for their passage, arrangements with the 
French for their entry; the buildings of the old monas- 
tery had to be made ready, furniture secured, a staff as- 
sembled, commissary arrangements made. Then schools 
had to be organized which would measure up to the high 
ideals of the Queen. Captain Graux overcame all diffi- 
culties and got the results expected. 

Some 650 children were brought out. 

Medical examination showed that while the children 
looked to be in fairly good condition, their resistance was 
below normal. The older ones had grown tall and lanky 
and could not stand much fatigue. The short ration, the 
scarcity of milk, and the fatless food had been even harder 
on the younger children. Plans were under way to bring 
out other convoys but the tide of battle set so strongly 
against the Germans that the end seemed to be in sight 
and new projects were given up. 

To meet a difficulty in furnishing shoes, Captain Graux 
established a work shop at Limoges where 80 pairs of 
shoes were produced per week. The surplus was sent to 
other children's colonies. 



THE WORKS OF HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN 139 

The total cost of Le Glandier was 1,745,625 francs. 

By the time this colony was organized, Belgian person- 
nel was very scarce. Dr. N/eelemans, medical director, 
was Belgian as were most of the teachers. We sent down 
a squad of Quakers, English and American, among whom 
were Henry Streeter, Zavitz, and Frank Morton, to help 
organize Boy Scout activities, a throat specialist, Dr. 
Wiggin, a medical assistant, Dr. Arnett, a dentist, Dr. 
La Bonte, and two American nurses, Martha Hower and 
Sarah Boyle, all of whom did good work. The two daugh- 
ters of the Commissioner, Miss Constance and Miss Al- 
berte Bicknell also did effective work at Le Glandier at a 
time when they were most needed. 

Under the joint patronage of Her Majesty and of the 
Minister of the Interior, Mrs. Haden Guest, an English 
lady, held baby consultations or clinics in Flanders and 
for them we shipped condensed milk and clothing to the 
value of nearly forty thousand francs. 

At the joint request of Her Majesty and the Minister, 
we sent up Dr. Park and Dr. Alma Rothholtz to go over 
the field and extend the usefullness of these consulations. 
Both did valuable work. Dr. Bothholtz stayed some weeks 
in the summer of 1918, but the great Belgian attack early 
in the fall changed the situation, and she turned at once 
to helping with the wounded, and it seemed best not to 
attempt further medical work for babies in Flanders. 



CHAPTEE XIX 

For Those Who Held the Line 

THE main work of the Ked Cross in the World War 
was to help the nations care for sick and wounded 
soldiers. By 1917, however, it was evident that the war 
was a contest not merely of armies against armies but of 
entire populations against entire populations. Construc- 
tively everybody was a combatant and actually thousands 
of civilians were killed or wounded. There was no ques- 
tion as to the necessity or legality of civilian welfare work. 
The misery of the fighting men who were not wounded 
was also evident. What they endured was almost more 
than flesh and blood could stand. The mud and cold, the 
stench and slime of many sectors of the front, made life 
there unspeakable, even in quiet times ; the bombardments 
only added to the danger and misery ; to all else was added 
the loneliness of long separations from home. What the 
war correspondents described so often as the set lips, the 
high stern look, the grim determination of men marching 
to the front was true but it was not the whole truth. In 
billets there was quite another story. What the soldiers' 
letters published of the mirth and the jollity of the men 
was also true — but there was another side to this also. 
The worst things were never written down. Even a wel- 
fare worker never writes them down. The long continued 
strain, the snapping of tense nerves, the shell shock, the 
men who went crazy, the desertions, the executions, — all 
these make a chapter also. And a great body of war phe- 
nomena is now classified as medical which before the 
Great War was never so classified. Whether a man in the 
trenches, clothes soaked or caked with mud, exhausted in 

140 



FOR THOSE WHO HELD THE LINE 141 

a mud hole, with brain reeling and nerves quivering from 
sights and sounds which the human being was never in- 
tended to experience, technically is or is not a medical 
problem, no Red Cross man worth his salt would hesitate 
about dealing with such a case. 

Whatever our individual theories, our orders were spe- 
cific: "Go to Europe at once. It will be a year before 
we can get fighting men over in any force. Express Amer- 
ican sympathy and cheer. Help lift the burden of war 
misery, civil and military, in all the allied countries. By 
your sympathy and aid, keep up the morale and prevent a 
German victory before our fighting forces come." 

So far as the American forces went, the American Red 
Cross divided the field of soldier welfare work with the 
Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, 
and similar organizations. In work for Belgium we made 
no such division until after the armistice, and we had got 
back to Brussels. 

Within the first three weeks of our arrival at Le Havre, 
Emile Vandervelde sought an interview with us and asked 
if in principle we were free to do something to improve 
the condition of the Belgian fighting troops — adding that 
he would like to go into details of needs if we were 
free to act at all. 

M. Vandervelde was the leader of the Socialist party in 
Belgium, active in the International Socialist organization, 
but he was engaged as Minister of Intendance in furnish- 
ing supplies to the Belgian Army. After the war he be- 
came Minister of Justice. No man rendered more loyal 
service during the war. Few; men in Belgium are his 
equal in sheer mental ability. Our own Red Cross men 
testified that he seemed absolutely devoid of fear and 
would lead them into advanced posts without any appar- 
ent thought of danger. His enemies said that he was too 
deaf to hear the noise going on about him. 

We informed M. Vandervelde that we would study the 



142 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

needs of fighting men precisely as we would those of refu- 
gees, of children or the wounded. 

He then asked us to put up a building in connection 
with the new Ocean Hospital at Wulveringhem-Vinckem 
to use as a canteen, a center of recreation and as a li- 
brary, for convelascent soldiers of the hospital and for 
the use of the thousands of other Belgian soldiers camped 
near that point. 

Investigation showed the need of this canteen and our 
first appropriation for military relief, 40,000 francs, went 
to this project, which was called the Home du Soldat. It 
stood out from all other projects of the kind because of the 
beautiful mural decorations painted by Allarcl l'Olivier, a 
famous Belgian artist, who was a common soldier in the 
trenches and who did this labor of love when en repos. 

M. Vandervelde, in our first interview, outlined the 
miserable condition of 13,000 soldiers working at Le 
Havre making munitions and doing automobile repair 
work. Their pay had been fixed in the theory that they 
were alone, but in fact many had been joined by their 
refugee families. "Frequently, through illness, the condi- 
tion of these families is desperate," said he. "If you will 
furnish a sum of money for actual relief, I will furnish 
the personnel to do the work and the oversight. Admit the 
principle and I will do the details." 

Again we admitted the principle, stating that relief of 
this kind was exactly what we were there for and that all 
we wanted to know was first that it was a real need, sec- 
ond that there was nobody else who could supply it, and 
third, that it would not overlap the work of other organi- 
zations. 

Of the work of Famille du Soldat Beige which grew out 
of this interview, we have spoken in the chapter on "Refu- 
gees" ; of the creche for munition workers, in the chapter 
on children. 

For the soldiers themselves at Le Havre, at Rouen, at 
Calais, and at other places in the rear and on lines of 




A Belgian Munition Worker at Le Havre. 



FOR THOSE WHO HELD THE LINE 143 

communication, we helped equip canteens, and reading 
rooms. Soldiers who previously had eaten meals while 
seated on the edge of a bunk now sat at a clean table. 
Those who had slept on a tick filled with straw on the 
floor, now had plain spring mattresses for beds. 

In addition, shower baths were installed in some cen- 
ters, a cooperative restaurant for those boarding them- 
selves, and recreation halls with books and games. 

All of our projects had to go before the Finance Com- 
mittee in Paris and to the War Council in Washington. 
This does not mean that freedom of action was limited in 
particular projects. It meant that if we needed ten mil- 
lion francs for a six months' period, we had to say why 
we needed it. 

What one of us wrote from the front in the winter of 
1917-1918 tells clearly why we asked for money to help 
the men at the front and just as clearly why Paris and 
Washington granted it as fast as the cables could operate. 

"The shelters are, roughly, dugouts and abris on the 
first line; abris and half ruined buildings on the second 
line; farm buildings, old wooden barracks and new brick 
barracks in the rear, that is, seven or eight miles back 
from the trenches where the soldiers go for fifteen to thirty 
days after spending four days in the trenches, four days 
on piquet and eight days on semi-repos. 

"Life in the abris and dugouts was the usual thing. 
They were low, crowded and dark, but warm. There was 
one continuous line of graves along the board walk of the 
Pervyse sector where the trenches consist of an embank- 
ment — back of the old Nieuport-Dixmude railroad. The 
soldiers in their dugouts lay within three or four feet 
of their comrades in their graves. 

"I visited the terrain recovered recently by the French, 
now held by the Belgians, adjoining the Ypres salient, 
around Merckem and Bixschoote and running up to the 
edge of the forest of Houthulst. Here trench lines are ob- 
literated. The entire front is a JSTo-Man's-Land of shell 



144 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

holes, presenting an almost continuous series of craters and 
furrows. It is either a sea of mud or frozen wilderness. 
Last Wednesday the snow of the night was over every- 
thing but it lost some of its beauty when a Major of Engi- 
neers complained bitterly that there had been such delay 
in getting white clothing for his men that he lost an un- 
necessarily large number every day. Before we left the 
sector two more of his men, who had talked with us, 
were killed while cutting ice to let water drain away. The 
defenses are not infantry lines at all. They are advance 
posts, machine gun emplacements and batteries. 

"Life on the Merckem and Bixschoote sectors is life in 
abris above ground; most of them German pill boxes. 
These sectors are especially bad, because of gas shelling. 
Shrapnel fire is almost continuous. And yet I heard men 
say: 'I'd rather be here than back in the barns.' 

"The life of the soldier on the farms and in half-de- 
stroyed villages is the problem of the long, dark winter 
nights without light or fire. 

"I found near Gyverinchove 240 men sleeping in two 
barns. Fires in other places had compelled a strict order 
against any stoves in these sleeping quarters. Petrol had 
given out and there were no lamps. Candles were impos- 
sible. The village was a mile or two away and the inter- 
vening roads were almost knee deep in mud. The barn 
buildings were old, with wide cracks in the siding through 
which the wind whistled. After four o'clock what was 
there for the soldier to do % When he did not wade to the 
village for a little fire and light in the estaminet, he 
crawled into his blankets on the soggy straw or hard boards 
to keep warm. And sometimes on the bitter nights, the 
men in these two barns had not slept at all, but were 
running up and down all night to keep warm. As I heard 
a soldier sing as he went along with a bucket of water, an 
officer said : 'That is the spirit of the men almost all the 
time. They keep their spirits up.' 

"At Keninghe, less than four miles from the German 



FOR THOSE WHO HELD THE LINE 145 

guns, I found a company of engineers billeted in farm 
buildings and abris. We had a dinner in a shed, and I 
spent some time in a pig pen where four men slept, the 
only part of a barn that was intact. These men had a fire. 
I was told repeatedly of places where there would be one 
stove for four barracks and where men would be moved 
from one barrack to the other to give all a chance at the fire. 

"All this would present a strong indictment against the 
Belgian Government and the Allies if there were not the 
other side. Fully half the army is now in the new brick 
barracks the government has been struggling for, against 
obstacles presented by scarcity of building materials and 
lack of money. These barracks are in groups of four, each 
accommodating fifty men, and each with a fifth barrack 
used for a dining hall, place of recreation, kitchen and 
canteen, but there are thousands of soldiers for whom no 
such quarters have been provided." 

Those who fought in Flanders speak as much of the 
hardships of the long winter nights, of the mud, the 
drenching rain, the piercing cold, as they do of terrible 
bombardments. 

An Antwerp boy who served some of us in Holland in 
1915 as a stenographer and who now was attached to a 
battery said, "We can stand the German shells. What we 
mind is the cold and nowhere to go." 

The country was so low that along much of the Belgian 
front, trenches were above ground. Not only did enemy 
shells hit them, but the waters which kept back the enemy 
undermined them and they fell down. Said one of the 
private Belgian soldiers : "The labor of the night was in- 
describable where under bullets and shells the men made 
their defensive works, always nibbled at by the water and 
opened up by the shells — always falling down — always 
having to be rebuilt." 

Several times that winter of 1917-1918, as well as the 
hard winter before, sentinels were found at their post dead 
of exposure and fatigue. 



146 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Adhering again to our determination to work through 
existing agencies, we did practically all our soldier welfare 
work through "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" and its allied 
organizations, all under general supervision of the Minis- 
ter Vandervelde ; the Appui Beige of Paris under the di- 
rection of Mademoiselle Glaenzer, a talented French girl, 
a granddaughter of the late Frederic R. Coudert of ISTew 
York; "Centres of Recreation" under Madame Paul Hy- 
mans, wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, one of the 
best of our Belgian workers; the Foyer du Soldat Beige 
and related authorities, under the Minister Brunet, 
who, since the war, has been made President of the Cham- 
ber of Deputies; and a number of smaller organizations. 

Few Belgian soldiers had a chance to go home on leave 
and their pay was so small that they could not afford to go 
into France. We found men who had had no leave in over 
three years of war. 

To meet this need, the Minister Monsieur Brunet cre- 
ated an organization called the Foyer du Soldat Beige 
which had six homes and a restaurant in Paris where 
Belgian soldiers could stay for a nominal fee. General De 
Ceuninck strongly endorsed this work and asked us to 
extend it. In December, 1917, the Red Cross made a 
grant of 99,000 francs to help open two new homes 
and maintain them for a year, and later the Red Cross 
helped open additional homes at Mareil and Pontoise. 
Through M. Blero and the Baron de Broqueville we helped 
open a similar home at Petite Couronne near Elbeuf. 
In a single year over 100,000 men were received for a 
period of 9 days each. 

Conge du Soldat Beige, a similar work in Paris, was in- 
teresting from the fact that no wealthy or powerful people 
contributed to its support. It was maintained by trades 
unions of Italy, France and Belgium, and took care of the 
soldiers in public restaurants and lodging houses on the 
theory that the men got enough of military life at the 
front, and that the vacation should be made as non-military 



FOR THOSE WHO HELD THE LINE 147 

as possible. But the men were met by comrades who acted 
as guides and friends throughout their stay. The Red 
Cross helped this society increase its soldier guests from 
forty to one hundred and fifty per month. 

Miss Glaenzer in Paris secured from us in the fall of 
1917 a grant of 10,000 francs a month for the Appui 
Beige which sent packages of food and clothing to prison- 
ers and opened and furnished canteens and recreation 
rooms for soldiers. This society worked in close coopera- 
tion with "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" and systematically 
divided the field. 

The British were the first to come to the help of the 
Belgian soldiers, and under M. Vandervelde, a society was 
organized in London called "British Gifts for Belgian 
Soldiers," which did valuable work sending small pack- 
ages of clothing, tobacco, chocolate and other little gifts 
to thousands of individual Belgian soldiers. 

When M. Vandervelde went to Le Havre as Minister of 
Supplies, he organized a branch of this society called 
"Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" to establish canteens, libra- 
ries, reading rooms, and to organize sports, concerts and 
cinemas and theatrical performances for the soldiers. 

It could no longer be financed in Europe as everybody 
was exhausted. We gave an initial credit to M. Vander- 
velde of 1,000,000 francs to finance his work on a much 
larger scale, followed it up with a second million when we 
saw the results and spent in all through his various 
works, 2,231,000 francs. 

Unable to get wood to build canteen barracks, he se- 
cured tents in England. A double tent, well lighted, with 
a wooden floor, and a good hot stove, is a warm cheerful 
place even on a winter night. Some small canteen tents 
Avere placed behind sand dunes or ruined buildings up close 
to the front trenches. Large ones were installed eight or 
ten miles back. In these tents the soldier could get hot 
chocolate, cigars, cigarettes, razors, pocket knives and sim- 
ilar small articles, candy, and sometimes beer. The larger 



148 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ones had adequate space for games and even in the smaller 
ones just behind the front line, there were cards, check- 
ers, etc. 

In La Panne alone more than 20,000 soldiers visited 
the canteen on the Place du Marche. Another canteen 
in this same Yser front served every day between 4 and 
7 : 30 P. M. an average of 1,520 cups of chocolate and from 
900 to 1,000 pancakes. In addition, biscuits, cakes, cof- 
fee, tea and lemonade were sold. Among the Belgians 
the real test of the effectiveness of a canteen was not 
whether it had beer, although beer was enjoyed, but 
whether it had hot chocolate, sweets and hot pancakes. 
"Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" quickly pushed forward when 
the Belgian Army advanced, and under Corporal Stoefs 
did a remarkable work in the frightful country around 
Houthulst Forest in the days when the army was waiting 
for its transport to catch up over the destroyed roads. 
Then when the soldiers reached the Bhine country, and 
the joy of victory subsided and they were face to face 
with the fact that the war was over, and everybody else 
was going home but themselves, the hot chocolate and hot 
pancakes were there to quiet the grumbling. 

No single feature of soldier welfare work brought more 
satisfactory results than the use of books. As Henry van 
Dyke told our own "Library Service" in the war : "Vic- 
tory does not depend solely upon big battalions, but upon 
large and strong and brave hearts and minds in the battal- 
ion. Nothing is more important in keeping up morale 
than a supply of really good reading matter for the men 
in hours of enforced inactivity. Human fellowship, good 
books and music are three of the best medicines and tonics 
in the world." 

The subcommittee of the "Gifts" in charge of reading 
matter was called Livre du Soldat Beige. We gave a grant 
to purchase company libraries of eighty books and to have 
made strong cases in which to ship and keep them. The 
Livre du Soldat Beige organized the service so that within 



FOR THOSE WHO HELD THE LINE 149 

the regiment each case was different and could be circu- 
lated from company to company. Books were furnished 
in French, Flemish, and English. A special service gave 
books for industrial, mechanical and professional train- 
ing. It was extraordinary to find how many young col- 
lege men there were in the Belgian Army. And just as 
extraordinary was it to see how the enforced separation 
from studies and contact with practical life gave value in 
their eyes to learning. The war itself as waged by engi- 
neers and chemists and mechanics of one kind or an- 
other. Every shell fired meant intricate calculations and 
computations. Artificial things had been stripped from 
life and they were immersed in reality. The schoolboys' 
blase indifference to books and the typical school atti- 
tude of contempt for the "grind" and admiration for the 
man of the world were all knocked to pieces in the deadly 
reality of war. They saw that knowledge was power, and 
power was life and victory. They wanted to keep up with 
their studies so that they would not be too far behind 
when the war ended. So we got the books and we fol- 
lowed the books up. Some we found in pill boxes and 
some were torn and some were soaked with blood, but 
they did their job. Like the dead horses and blinded 
horses and wounded dogs and broken automobiles, the 
wounded books helped hold the line. For amusement, for 
"medicine, for instruction, for moral training, they were 
among our most effective agents. They were a part of the 
preparedness for peace begun in war. And by keeping 
up morale they helped with the war. 

Madame Paul Hymans placed her Centres of Recrea- 
tion in the forward areas of the army and did admirable 
work in furnishing moving pictures and other entertain- 
ments. After the armistice, her work was much en- 
larged for the soldiers holding the Rhine. She secured 
the help of two especially effective men: Conrad Ver- 
haeghe de Naeher and Charles de Smeth of Brussels. 
They had taken their lives in their hands and made their 



150 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

escape from Brussels in 1918. They had lain all one night 
in the cold, wet bushes 300 yards from the frontier of 
Holland before they found a chance to make the desperate 
run, cut the electric wire and crawl under. When they 
reached the Khineland they saw clearly that conditions of 
life for the soldiers were bound to be difficult. "No Bel- 
gian or French newspaper arrives," they wrote under date 
of December 27, 1918. "The revictualing is infrequent 
and insufficient. Railway wagons are robbed en route. 
It is not possible to depend on the inhabitants for food 
for they have nothing to give. All the soldiers deplore 
their isolation and their lack of quick communication 
with their families." 

A report from a Red Cross man at the same time said : 
"The Belgians occupy a very flat country — a rich farm- 
ing country sept bare by war — stretching from Diissel- 
dorf north to where the Rhine enters Holland. It is a 
God-forsaken kind of a job to do garrison duty now that 
the war is over, and I believe the appropriations made for 
canteen work will do great good." To Madame Hymans' 
work in Germany we gave cash and supplies of the value of 
200,000 francs. Madame de Hemptinne, whom we had 
helped in soldier welfare work also moved up to Crefeld, 
Germany, and established useful canteens. Lieutenant 
Duclot of the Belgian Army was detailed to install the 
cinema apparatus. "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers" purchased 
a considerable number and showed good team work by in- 
stalling them in the Centres of Madame Hymans and 
Madame de Hemptinne' s as well as in the canteens and 
military clubs of their own. 



CHAPTER XX 
What Civil Hospitals Did 

THE story of the civil hospital in the war is full of 
interest and significance. What civil hospitals did 
was what civilian doctors did in every allied country, viz : 
bear enormous responsibility and a crushing burden of 
work. To begin with the great majority of effective doc- 
tors and surgeons in Europe were called to the colors leav- 
ing double, treble and quadruple duty for the older men 
at home. Even in the United States the burden on doc- 
tors left behind was very heavy. 

In European countries many civil hospitals were taken 
over for military purposes, leaving the institution to make 
snch provisional arrangements elsewhere as were pos- 
sible. 

All the hospitals of Belgium were captured by the 
Germans except a few behind the British and Belgian 
lines like Ypres and Fumes, which were soon knocked 
to pieces by shells. Many of the hospitals of northern 
France which the Commission to Belgium had to look 
after, likewise were captured or destroyed. 

Among those that had to be evacuated were Hazebrouck, 
Bethune and Arras. This threw a heavy load on the 
hospitals that remained. Erom a military standpoint the 
civil hospitals were important for two reasons. If they 
did not function, the military hospitals had to do their 
work and this additional call generally came in times of 
military activity when they were the busiest. K"o mili- 
tary hospital would refuse shelled or bombed civilians if 
they had nowhere else to go. The great Belgian Ocean 

151 



152 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Hospital at La Panne repeatedly took in civilians to tide 
over an emergency. 

On the purely medical side also, civil hospitals were 
important from a military standpoint to deal with conta- 
gious disease which, if once started, spread from civilians 
to soldiers. 

From the standpoint of the civilian population, the 
civil hospitals had an importance ten fold greater than 
in time of peace. Whether in forward areas of the army 
or in the interior, life was abnormal. People were ex- 
posed to shells or the bombs of aviators. If free from 
such dangers, they had others more stealthy. Their food 
did not feed them, or their houses were overcrowded, or 
their work was under hard conditions and the family doc- 
tor had gone to* the war. There might be only one prac- 
titioner left for a score of little villages, and his only 
method of getting about might be one of the old high two- 
wheeled gigs drawn by a horse too old and decrepit for 
military use. If he prescribed, the drug stores might be 
empty, or at best be like the little drug store down along 
the Marne carrying on bravely with "nothing but liver 
pills and almanacs." 

Little boys continued to fall out of apple trees and 
break their arms as they had before the war. The old 
grandfather cut his leg with the axe as he split the wood. 
The old woman got bronchitis. The young mother had 
her baby to bring forth. If tuberculosis had a foothold 
anywhere, it flamed up under the hardships. Wells were 
polluted, water mains were broken, reservoirs were cap- 
tured by the enemy and typhoid took a deadly toll. 

All such conditions were felt especially where refugees 
crowded together, and to all else was added the mental 
suffering of peasants who had to be treated by strangers 
whose language they did not understand, and whose ways 
were strange to them. 

When one came to deal with the civil hospital situation, 
one found a further complication. Both doctors and 



WHAT CIVIL HOSPITALS DID 153 

nurses wanted to do military work rather than civilian. 
It was the same with the volunteers. There was a glamor 
about the one thing entirely lacking in the other. Every 
red-blooded man or woman on earth wanted to prove his 
courage — to show that he was not a shirker — to serve in 
the advanced surgical post exposed to gas and shells rather 
than 40 miles in the rear. It was difficult to get personnel 
for civil hospital work. 

When once it was understood, when the whole mass of 
loathesome, repulsive, dangerous disease was seen, when 
the deep human need with its appeal was realized, some 
of the finest men and women volunteered for this service. 

To their everlasting credit let it be said that they knew 
that they cut themselves off from mention in despatches, 
from honors and decorations, and perhaps even from any 
real understanding of their service by their fellows. 

What we did along civil hospital lines may be summar- 
ized as follows : 

a. We equipped a small civil hospital in the Doorntje, 
near Leysele, West Flanders eight miles from the front 
line for the use of the Service de Sante of the Minister of 
the Interior, and furnished supplies for it, amounting to 
seventy thousand francs. 

b. We furnished clothing, dressings and other supplies 
for the Belgian Maternity Hospital at Rousbrugge, West 
Flanders. When Rousbrugge was shelled we helped evac- 
uate this hospital to Leysele and when Leysele was bombed 
we helped evacuate again to a part of the civil hospital in 
the Doorntje. 

c. We supplied the Hopital Elisabeth, of the Countess 
Van den Steen at Couthove, near Poperinghe, also close 
to the front and always in danger, with a large quantity of 
drugs, bandages and dressings, installed electricity for it 
and gave it financial help. This hospital did an impor- 
tant civilian work but took some soldiers and also Belgian 
gendarmes who were militarized. 

d. We gave money and supplies to the Hopital Alex- 



154 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

andra of the Friends' Ambulance Unit at Dunkirk as de- 
scribed in the following chapter, and took the entire sup- 
port of the little hospitals which they pushed forward at 
the time of the allied advance in the fall of 1918 at 
Courtrai, Roulers, Poperinghe, Lille, and Roubaix. 

e. We helped the hospital of Madame de Liouville at 
Ebblingham, and with the French Prefet of Calais, the 
Friends' Ambulance Unit, the British P. M. O. (medical 
officer of the area) and Madame de Liouville, wife of a 
French officer of note, we formed an alliance to establish a 
new hospital for Madame de Liouville at Lumbres west of 
St. Omer when it seemed likely that the Germans would 
sweep over Ebblingham. 

f. We bought the Chateau of Job in the Auvergne 
for 150,000 francs as an additional tuberculosis sanato- 
rium under the Minister of the Interior and gave an X-ray 
machine and other supplies to the existing sanatorium at 
Chanay. 

It is interesting to note that the Belgians who paid 
350,000 francs for Chanay sold off enough farm land to 
pay for the institution and all its furnishing and that 
both institutions have been kept since the war as they 
give an elevation and a climate which can not be found 
anywhere in Belgium. 

g. We put a little barrack up four miles back of Ynres 
for Dr. Louf, the one civil doctor who remained in this 
dangerous sector and who was not only physician and sur- 
geon, but burgomaster, townclerk, and banker for the 
peasants who stayed. 

h. We gave another barrack at a cost of 9,000 francs 
for a little Belgian maternity hospital in Calais. 

i. We helped the overtaxed French civil hospitals at St. 
Omer, Montreuil-sur-mer, Henchin, Hesdin, and Arras 
with both money and garments. 

j. We installed electricity at La Chartreuse, a most 
picturesque Belgian civil hospital in a huge monastery of 
the Carthusian monks near British General Headquarters 



WHAT CIVIL HOSPITALS DID 155 

at Montreuil. We got an X-ray machine for them, and 
furnished other supplies. 

k. We organized and supported a Belgium civil hos- 
pital at Le Havre for refugees which had to be turned for 
a time into a military hospital to take care of a great in- 
flux of wounded. 

1. Most important of all, we organized with the Minis- 
ter of Interior at Le Havre a hospital, a clinic, a creche, 
and a pouponniere for children in which Dr. Park did his 
great work, and from which sprang Dr. Ramsey's impor- 
tant work at Rouen. 

The civil hospital work in both France and Belgium 
would have had a sorry time of it if it had not been for 
various orders of Catholic sisters. The Belgian Red Cross 
took the position that most of them were not trained in 
the modern way, that nursing is a profession as much as 
doctoring, and standards should be set high and main- 
tained. But they also recognized that if a man is off in 
the wilderness and a tree falls on him — he may well be 
grateful even for a simple untrained woodsman who can 
bind up his wounds and give him a chance to live. 

Over considerable areas and at some periods of the war 
there was nobody else to do the work of civil hospitals 
but religious sisters. They did heroic work. They car- 
ried water long distances in pails. They scrubbed floors. 
They washed dirty linen. They did the cooking. They 
bathed and clothed and fed all kinds of patients afflicted 
with all kinds of diseases. They put up with every kind 
of building and housekeeping inconvenience when they 
had to and made earnest appeals for changes needed when 
they saw a chance. 

Some were illiterate peasants and some were cultured 
ladies. They had their little jealousies. But for sheer 
endurance, for fidelity in times apt to shake anybody, and 
for devotion to human beings as God's children, nobody 
in the war surpassed them. There were white sisters and 
brown sisters and black sisters so far as garb was con- 



156 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

eerned, and sometimes necessity made the authorities mix 
different kinds of sisters in one institution. 

The much-tried head of one great hospital, himself a 
devout Catholic, said one day : "The trouble is not serious 
but there is always a little friction when you mix them up. 
And there are three reasons for it: First, they belong to 
different countries; second, they have different customs in 
their different orders ; third, they are all women." 

The Commission to Belgium could have used five hun- 
dred strong mature American women at any time as 
nurses, who had no training whatever as nurses but who 
had health, common sense, ability to obey orders and to 
fit into the lives of foreigners with different ideas and 
standards. The civil hospitals of Belgium and northern 
France were undermanned in every way. 

The American Red Cross did much to make up for the 
lack, and to cheer on the overtaxed workers by sympathy, 
advice, friendliness and gifts of everything needed from 
drugs, blankets and dressings down to money, and in sev- 
eral cases gave that which in this field Belgians and 
French could not supply for themselves — additional 
trained help. 



CHAPTER XXI 

Quaker Foundations for Our Work 

IN the pursuit of Eliza, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
Phineas, the Quaker, met Simon Legree, the slave- 
catcher, as he jumped a chasm, and pushing out his 
long arms sent Simon crashing down on the rocks, saying, 
"Friend, thee hast gone far enough." Then, the danger 
over, he went down and rescued Simon, bore him to his 
own house, cared for him and made him a new man. 

Since Quakers first "saw the light," there has been 
this everlasting conflict between the duty to meet force 
with force and the ideal of nonresistance. 

The Quakers, as I have seen them, have a high average 
of intelligence, unselfishness and practical efficiency. 

It was to the Quakers of England, as well as the non- 
Quakers, that the war summons came in 1914. According 
to their interpretation of the religion of Christ, they could 
not use military force even to meet Germany. They were 
commanded by the "inner light" to use other ways. To 
some this is foolishness, and yet a foolishness which has 
back of it a sublime wisdom and a prophecy of a more 
perfect age. 

At any rate, there was nothing in their religion which 
made them soft, shirking or cowardly. They quoted in 
their meetings the command "Take your share of hard- 
ship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ." They had a his- 
tory of service in other wars. So when "The Great War" 
came to England, the young Quakers began to move spon- 
taneously to see what they could do. 

"The War Victims Relief Committee" and the "Friends' 

157 



158 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Ambulance Unit" were the two main channels of Quaker 
war work. 

The first of these organizations held, itself more rigidly 
to non-military work. The second carried wounded, sol- 
diers as well as civilians throughout the war. 

We came into touch with the "War Victims Relief Com- 
mittee" soon after we reached Paris in 1917. Henry Scat- 
tergood and Morris Leeds, Philadelphia Quakers, who 
came over on the ship with the original commission of 
the American Red Cross, were determined that Colonel 
Bicknell and I should visit "the relief work of the English 
Quakers down along the Marne," before we did anything 
else. Nobody could resist Scattergood. He put the whole 
thing through, got the orders and the passes while we 
were still unorganized, had a big Renault limousine turned 
over to us, and then went off with Leeds by rail to meet 
us there. 

Colonel Bicknell, Major Ernest McCullough of the army, 
at that time a part of the Red Cross Construction Depart- 
ment, and I, with R. C. Toms, an American ambulance 
boy with a fine record, drove out along the rue Lafayette 
toward the northeast on a trip which will always stand 
out vividly in our minds. 

Within an hour we were out around Meaux where the 
high tide of the German advance had penetrated in 1914. 
Then far off we heard the rumble of the guns coming closer 
arid closer. 

Those were days of keen and vivid impression for us. 
We saw the observation balloons on the lines. We passed 
the French troops going up and coming back from the 
trenches and all the services of supply. We saw destroyed 
villages, little places like Sermaize quite wiped out in 
1914 by the armies of the Crown Prince. 

Then for four days in this lovely Marne country we 
studied the work of these English Friends spread out from 
Chalons-sur-Marne to Bar le-duc,, and from Bar le-duc to 
Troyes. 



QUAKER FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR WORK 159 

Their work dealt with French civilians — the sick who 
had no place to go, the children orphaned by war, the refu- 
gees living in congested cities and towns, the inhabitants 
of the region who were trying to rebuild their homes, and 
the peasant families whose places were intact but who 
were struggling to cultivate and harvest with a country 
stripped of its best man power. 

There was a little civil hospital at Chalons with Dr. 
Hilda Clark, a granddaughter of John Bright, in charge. 
She had such strong native intelligence and fine scien- 
tific training, and she had been out in France so long 
that she was not merely the head doctor of a little civilian 
hospital but a competent public health advisor for the 
entire region. 

The ambulances stationed here had been going regu- 
larly into Rheims, always more or less under shell fire, 
and had been bringing out the old people, the sick and the 
children. 

We saw another civil hospital near Sermaize and an 
orphanage with the happiest lot of children to be found 
<my where at Bettancourt. 

The Friends themselves had found refuge and a head- 
quarters for their work in an abandoned hotel to which 
was attached a bath establishment at Sermaize. The heal- 
ing waters bubbled up peacefully and sparkled in the sun 
although over toward the north, the guns kept going all 
night and at daybreak made a great thundering. 

At the head of the equipe or unit at Sermaize was 
Marjorie Fry, on leave from her work in the Woman's 
Department of Birmingham University, and now in 1921 
standing for Parliament. In the relief field she was the 
type which thinks and moves with great speed. She had 
a fine mind, long contact with the problems we were fac- 
ing, a bubbling, effervescent, fun-loving personality, side 
by side with her deep human sympathy. 

Among the more sober Quakers about the fire the first 
uight of our visit we found other unusual types, lawyers, 



160 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

doctors, engineers, clerks, all of them well read, most of 
them philosophers and every one of them out there to 
actually do things and not to supervise some one else. The 
young men climbed on to mowing machines and helped get 
in the crops. They took hammers and nails and saws and 
built houses for people to live in. The girls baked and 
stewed and washed and visited the people in their homes. 
Everybody took his place and went to the kitchen stove 
to get his own breakfast. These ruddy-faced men and 
women were there for business, and one of the things they 
settled in the beginning was that overworked France 
should not have to work for them. 

Strange comment is all this on our fussing and theoriz- 
ing about nations getting together. Here was every rea- 
son why the English Quakers should not understand the 
French, and the French not understand the Quakers. 
There is nothing in a Frenchman to respond to the idea 
of nonresistance, or in a Frenchwoman to respond to 
Quaker bonnets. France and England have an inherit- 
ance of ancient wars. Yet here we saw the French peas- 
ants turning to these sober gray-clad men and women with 
the most touching devotion. Plain, old-fashioned neigh- 
borly kindness broke down every barrier of race or creed 
or garb or language. 

Those Quakers are still there in this year of our Lord 
1921, sought by the Pre jets and Sous-Prefets to help them 
in the arduous work of reconstruction. 

We walked through Sermaize and other little villages 
where all the shelters were the wooden shelters the Friends 
put up and all the live stock, the rabbits and chickens 
which they supplied. 

We saw French and German graves scattered over the 
fields and along the roads. Just out of the village of Ser- 
maize was the grave of the German officer who gave the 
order to burn the town and it was carefully tended like 
the rest. 

We stopped by one of the temporary wooden houses the 



QUAKER FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR WORK 161 

Friends had put up and talked to the woman who stood 
on her side porch. Her main support was her garden and 
we noticed how much space in the garden was taken up 
by two German graves of soldiers who three years before 
had burned her home with the others. Covering the graves 
was a wealth of nasturtiums in full bloom. We were in- 
expressibly touched by her care of the graves and her 
reply to our questions: "The German women would do 
the same by our dead." 

We visited sewing rooms in larger places where refu- 
gee women were at work for themselves and their coun- 
trymen. We saw how the Friends, just as Hoover did in 
Occupied Belgium, sold to those who could pay and gave 
to those who could not. We saw houses they had rented, 
cleaned up and subrented at reasonable rates to refugee 
families. 

As we drove back to Paris, Sunday, July 1, 1917, Bick- 
nell said, "That is the real thing. There is no humbug 
about that relief work. They are on sound lines. We 
must tie up with them, help them to expand, and take ad- 
vantage of their experience." 

All through July and August, Bicknell and I were work- 
ing with the Commission for France as a Department of 
Social and Economic Conditions, studying and planning. 
We got into touch with the English Friends' Committee in 
Paris of which Wilfred Shewell was secretary and Ralph 
Fllliott treasurer. 

Ted Harvey, member of Parliament, and Chairman of 
the Friends work for France, often came into our con- 
ferences, back on his bicycle from the Marne or Somme, 
or just over from England on one of his many trips. Dr. 
Hilda Clark and Marjorie Fry sat up late at night help- 
ing us plan civilian work. 

We asked them to show what they could do with more 
money. Leeds and Scattergood asked them how English 
and American Friends could work together. 

Under Bicknell's wise direction, I worked steadily with 



162 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

them at plans of cooperation. Homer Folks came and 
took charge of all American Red Cross civilian work in 
France and saw immediately the possibilities. 

On August 25, I recorded in my diary: 

"Finance Committee (of the Red Cross) put through 
today, the English Friends' estimate of 533,000 francs 
for the next three months' work. Had tea at 'Vouille- 
mont' with Ted Harvey, Miss Pye, Miss Frye, Mr. Scat- 
tergood and Shewell. Folks has come up to the mark 
quickly and splendidly on this Friends business. Bicknell 
has been strong for it. Left me to handle it the last 
week while he was in Switzerland. I'm glad it is settled 
the right way. Henry Allen of Kansas and William Al- 
len White to dinner with me tonight and were keenly in- 
terested in all this Quaker business with which I was 
bubbling over." 

Davison back in Washington, and Grayson Murphy had 
the vision to see the possibilities and they had acted with 
that confidence, speed, and precision which won our de- 
voted allegiance. 

When the American Friends' first unit arrived in Paris, 
Henry Scattergood got them together and said this to 
them : 

"We are here because we feel that we must do some- 
thing, not expecting an easier life than the millions of men 
who are following their light in other ways, and we are 
ready to do the hardest and lowliest kind of work. It 
is not that our blood is any less red or our patriotism 
any less real, it is that we are conscious that we are 
servants of a King who is above all nations — the King of 
Love, and that we must live out his gospel of love." 

In "American Red Cross Work Among the French 
People" by Fisher Ames, and in "A Service of Love in 
War Time" by Rufus M. Jones, a professor of Haverford 
College and head of the American Friends' Service Com- 
mittee, the story of this unit is told. 

Mr. Jones tells, for example, about sawing boards, or 



QUAKER FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR WORK 163 

putting in window sashes, or hanging doors, for destitute 
peasants in destroyed villages along the Marne and in the 
Somme, but the Quaker boy who nails and hammers writes : 

"Oh, patient master workman of the world, 

Shaper of all this home of human kind ! 
Teach me the truer trade of making doors and windows 
for men's souls : 
Windows for letting in love's widening dawn, 
Doors swinging outward freely on Truth's pleasant 
ways." 

In France the work was divided into six departments : 
medical, building, works, manufacturing, agriculture, re- 
lief. Three other services had to be added: transport, 
maintenance, equipment. ISTo organization in Europe sur- 
passed the Quakers in quick adaptability and hard common 
sense. They did the thing needed and did it with un- 
usual intelligence. And they all fell to with their hands 
and well as their heads. 

In all 600 men served in France in the American 
Friends' Unit and to their work the American Red Cross 
gave $621,699.22. 

Their leaders, Henry Scattergood, Charles Evans, Dr. 
James A. Babbitt, and Charles J. Rhoads, set high 
standards of forceful wise administration. 

Their service of love in war time was this : They went 
into the Jura mountains, felled trees, sawed lumber, manu- 
factured portable houses, rebuilt burned villages, evacu- 
ated refugees, operated maternity hospitals, cared for 
the tubercular, fought contagion, picked up the wounded, 
helped in schools for the mutiles, worked at making arti- 
ficial limbs, conducted children's colonies, ran tractors, 
plows, reapers, etc., to help peasants get in their crops, and 
did it so as to make the French love them. 

For Quakers to keep out of war, however, is an impos- 
sibility, no matter how much they may think they do. 



164 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

There is nobility but no logic in conscientious objection. 
In war time whoever raises wheat or corn or cotton makes 
war, and that in no Pickwickian sense. 

We won the last war not simply because Foch. and 
Pershing and Sir Douglas were better generals than Luden- 
dorff and the old Marshal Hindenburg, but because we 
had more iron, wheat flour, cloth and hog fat. 

Whoever helps keep society going in war time helps 
keep the army going. If it's wrong to drive an ammuni- 
tion wagon, it is wrong to drive an ambulance and wrong 
even to drive the mail truck or farm wagon back home. 

The Quakers were gloriously illogical. These Ameri- 
can Quakers in France and their backers here at home 
helped defeat Germany by keeping up the morale of civil- 
ians in France. Strong, tender Quaker hands helped 
carry our wounded boys coming back from Chateau- 
Thierry and Soissons. It was magnificent, but it was war. 

But, logical or illogical, they drew the line at killing 
and even at hating. They say, "We will do any hard, 
dangerous, dirty, necessary job no one else wants to do ; we 
will work patiently where no one sees us, no one praises 
us; we will stand hatred and injustice even, but we won't 
violate our consciences by standing up and killing our 
fellow men." 

No outgrowth of the war along relief lines is more sig- 
nificant than the movement described in a closing para- 
graph of Dr. Jones : 

"The Service Committee is calling upon young Friends 
throughout the country to look toward volunteering for at 
least one year of service for others before entering upon 
their life career in business vocations. Many types of 
community service are being proposed for their consider- 
ation, while the Service Committee stands ready to open 
the door for each specific line of activity and to provide 
financial assistance for the experiment. It is hoped of 
course that many qualified persons will thus be turned per- 
manently into avenues of public and community service." 



CHAPTER XXII 

Quakers in Action at the Front 

WHEN we got to work in Flanders, we found Quakers 
in uniform. Up in the last corner of France at 
Dunkirk, we came on to the Friends' Ambulance Unit. 
What Colonel Bicknell had said down on the Marne — "Tie 
up to these Quakers" — he repeated with even greater em- 
phasis at Dunkirk. "If we are to use existing agencies, 
here is the real thing." 

The Hon. Sir Arthur Stanley, C. B. E., C. B., M. V. O., 
Chairman of the British Red Cross Society and of the 
Order of St. John, put it this way: "All interested in 
adventure, loyalty, endurance, skill, devotion to duty and 
self-sacrifice, should read the story of the Friends' Ambu- 
lance Unit." 

When we came to know General Forwood, Provost Mas- 
ter General of the British Army, he said: "We don't 
accept their principles, but they have kept their word, 
played the game, and showed real courage." 

The story of the beginning of their work is full of ro- 
mance. Early in the war, while the Friends were seeking 
ways to help, Philip Baker, who had been one of their 
most famous athletes at Cambridge, talked over with Sir 
George Newman and others the organization of an Ambu- 
lance Unit, got their approval and issued an appeal in 
"The Friend" of August 21, 1914, for volunteers. 

They organized almost immediately, formed a training 
camp, but nobody had anything for them to do. They even 
talked of going to Serbia, but the way was blocked. 

Then things happened suddenly as they generally hap- 
pen in war. They got their chance because they had a 

165 



166 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

man on the spot who saw it. That is how chances come 
in war. 

Geoffrey Young, a Friend, was a war correspondent, 
and got over to the continent. 

The little Belgian Army had been fighting their heroic 
battle on the Yser and saving the channel ports. But they 
had paid heavily and their hospitals had not been organ- 
ized to meet the strain. Geoffrey Young saw the con- 
gestion of wounded and hurried to London. With Philip 
Baker, he went to Sir Arthur Stanley, head of the British 
Red Cross Society, with an offer to go at once to help 
the Belgians, which was accepted. 

The unit got together several tons of medical and 
other supplies, eight ambulances and forty-three men, of 
whom three were doctors and six dressers of wounds, and 
sailed from Dover, iVugust 30. 

What we found all through the war, they found the 
first night at Dover, — information absolutely misleading. 
They were told that the Belgians had been withdrawn 
from the line and that there was no need for them "over 
there." But they stuck to their purpose and crossed in the 
morning. 

The need met them just out of sight of land when 
their convoy darted off at high speed and they themselves 
soon came up to a great English cruiser, the "Hermes," 
torpedoed and "sinking slowly in the tumbling waters." 
Some of the men went overboard to help sailors who were 
sinking, others helped man boats, still others got up sup- 
plies, hot food, medicines, and made beds for the rescued. 
So they had their first illustration of need and their bap- 
tism of service. They put out again in the afternoon 
after their vessel had landed the survivors, and in Dun- 
kirk after dark they had their second illustration. ]STews 
came on board where they had settled down for the night, 
of wounded men lying around the railroad station uncared 
for. They landed on the dark wharves, sorted surgical 



QUAKERS IN ACTION AT THE FRONT 167 

stores by the light of lamps and made their way to the 
station. 

The Quakers are not given to lurid description but this 
is what they record themselves: 

"A terrible sight met their eyes. In the half-darkness 
of these bare sheds lay hundreds upon hundreds of wounded 
men stretched on the straw-covered floor, Frenchmen, Bel- 
gians, and here and there a few British and Germans. 
They had been there, many of them, for three full days 
and nights, practically unattended, mostly even unfed, the 
living, the dying and the dead side by side, long rows of 
figures in every attitude of slow suffering or acute pain, of 
utter fatigue or dulled apathy, of appeal or despair. Out 
of the cool night air, one passed through these high doors 
into an atmosphere that was insufferably revolting. It 
required a great effort of will to face the sight and stench 
of the countless gangrenous limbs that lay there helpless 
among the foul straw." * 

In this Dunkirk where they had been so suddenly set 
down they established themselves. It was one of the most 
terribly "proved" or "tried" towns which, in spite of all, 
held together. Both the English and French have deco- 
rated it. It was the nearest port to the trenches, within 
reach of the long range guns behind the German lines, 
shelled by fast little German destroyers on their raids 
and bombed horribly up to the very end. Other places 
were shelled worse but were evacuated. Dunkirk held 
together although a population of 40,000 went down to 
3,000. 

Nobody can well exaggerate the heroism of those who 
kept this port open, the railroads and trolley lines running, 
manufacturing and commerce going on under the condi- 
tions which these people faced. 

"And why," wrote Anna Milo Upjohn, after a visit, 
"does one stay in so precarious an outpost on the verge of 

*"The Friends' Ambulance Unit, 1914-1919." Tatham and Miles, p, 7. 



168 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

the fighting line? Some perhaps because to set forth 
alone or with a brood of children into an unknown world 
already trampled by countless refugees, seems an equally 
perilous outlook. Others because their maintenance still 
depends on the docks and shipyards, though the 6,000 
longshoremen usually employed about the piers have dis- 
appeared. 

"Then there are those whose interests are bound up in 
a shop or other investment in the town and business is 
brisk in Dunkirk owing to the presence of two armies. 
A few there are who are not only of Dunkirk, but who are 
Dunkirk itself, upon whose presence depends the pros- 
perity of the town and its usefulness to the state." 

Such a one was M. Morel, United States Consular 
Agent, and President of the Chamber of Commerce of 
Dunkirk. His father before him had served France and 
the United States for a lifetime and he had intense pride 
in not being driven out. His office was open to the 
sky as a shell had taken off the corner of the room, but 
he never left. 

The Friends' Ambulance Unit from this center did civil 
relief work for the French and Belgians, established 
little hospitals both military and civilian, sent convoys of 
ambulances to work in the forward areas of the French 
Army, manned British hospital trains, and hospital ships, 
and did a variety of services for the British, French and 
Belgian Armies, and the French and Belgian civil govern- 
ments, which cannot be catalogued and hardly understood 
by those not there. 

Their motto was "Find the thing which needs to be done. 
Do it. Regularize it afterwards if you can." 

Sir George Newman, K. C. B., of London, Chairman of 
the Committee of Friends which made the work possible, 
gave in March, 1919, a concise statement of the work 
done. 

"You began," said he, addressing the unit, "with 43 
men. You finish with 1,800. You began with a dona- 



QUAKERS IN ACTION AT THE FRONT 169 

tion of a hundred pounds; you finish having received 
140,000 pounds. You began never having served a 
wounded man; you finish having served an innumerable 
host of many races. . . . You began not knowing whither 
you went; you finish having proved to the hilt your 
capacity to undertake the responsibility of hospitals, dress- 
ing stations, huts, sanitation, relief work, ambulance con- 
voys, ambulance trains, ambulance ships, all in a volun- 
tary unit, unenlisted, unarmed and unpaid. 

"The unit was responsible for more than a dozen hos- 
pitals which it established and managed at Dunkirk, 
Ypres, Poperinghe, Courtrai, Hazebrouck, and other 
places in the war zone, and at York, Birmingham, Lon- 
don and Richmond in England. At the Queen Alexandra 
Hospital, 28,000 persons were inoculated against typhoid ; 
14,000 Belgian refugees were fed and a vast quantity of 
clothing distributed; lace centers, temporary schools, and 
orphanages, milk distribution and water purification were 
undertaken in Belgium; tens of thousands of soldiers were 
received at the three recreation huts in Dunkirk; the two 
hospital ships transported 24,000 cases; the ambulance 
convoys ran three million kilometres and carried 245,000 
sick and wounded soldiers ; and the four ambulance trains 
conveyed 520,000 cases." * 

In the fall of 1917 we found the Friends' Ambulance 
Unit located in the Hotel Pyl, a four-story structure built 
on the beach at Malo-les-Bains just outside the walls of 
Dunkirk. In buildings near by were two garages and a 
storehouse of food and clothing. Just down the street 
were a number of wooden barracks in which they had their 
Hospital Alexandra, civil, military, army, navy, British, 
French, Belgian, American, Portuguese — in fact "all 
things to all men" from a sailor who fell down a hatch- 
way on his ship in the harbor to His Royal Highness, the 
Duke of Athlone, brother of the Queen of England, and 



*'The Friend, London, March, 1919. 



170 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

a General in the British Army. Theoretically they kept 
80 beds for the British Army and 40 beds for the British 
Navy. Actually they had every kind of a patient, — the 
American Red Cross Commissioner at one time counted 
sixteen nationalities among the patients — British, French, 
Belgians, Chinese, Egyptians, West Indians, Americans, 
Russians, Serbians, Hindoos, Germans, and others. We 
found them with a noble record of civilian evacuations 
from Ypres and all the country around, from 1914 down, 
and with long experiences in civil hospital work which 
went even so far as organized "search party" work to go 
from house to house in both French Flanders and Belgian 
Flanders to run down contagion before it got started. 

We saw the medical authorities of the British Army 
both at General Headquarters and at the headquarters 
of their different armies in the field, who urged us to help 
the Friends, and said that "no more intelligent and valu- 
able relief work" was being done anywhere, but that they 
were having a hard time now to raise their big budget 
in England. 

All these requests from our Allies were powerful rein- 
forced by our inspection of the work and by coming to 
know the men in charge. 

Captain Leslie Maxwell and Captain Meaburn Tatham, 
both commissioned in the British Army, the two command- 
ing officers of the unit, with whom we worked, W. Mordey, 
Adjutant of the unit, to whom our War Department gave 
a commission as Major before we got through, Harold 
Watts in charge of hospital trains, L. J. Caclbury in charge 
of transportation, Brian T. Mennell in charge of Stores, 
Dr. Humphrey Nockolds, Principal Medical Officer of 
the hospital and Doctor Manning were able men and fine 
comrades. 

Five men of the unit were mentioned in despatches by 
British Commanders, one man twice; one received the 
British Distinguished Service Order, two the Order of 
the British Empire, three nurses the military medal, and 



QUAKERS IN ACTION AT THE FRONT 171 

eleven nurses the Royal Red Cross medal, while the French 
gave the Croix de Guerre to eighty-six of these brave fel- 
lows. In addition the Belgians made eleven men Che- 
valiers de VOrdre de Id Couronne. A number of other 
French and Italian decorations were given. 

As they were sensible enough to put on uniforms in or- 
der to get their opportunity to work in the forward areas, 
they were sensible enough not to make themselves obnox- 
ious by refusing decorations. But nevertheless they were 
true to Quaker ideals of simplicity and modesty. It need 
not be said that they were not in the very considerable 
group that sought decorations and generally got them. 

We had intended to organize our own transportation 
service at the front but with Paris to call on and with 
the Friends doing precisely what we proposed, we made 
them our transportation agents and turned over to them 
nine heavy trucks, a Ford, and several motor cycles. We 
planned transport mainly for taking supplies forward to 
starving people who might be suddenly liberated and to 
bring people in danger back to the rail heads. The motor 
cycles were to keep in touch all over our vast area of north- 
ern France and Free Belgium. 

In all the demands upon the Friends' Ambulance Unit 
after 19 IT and the sudden expansion of their work, due 
especially to the fighting of 1918 — what they did, they 
themselves assert — was only possible because of the co- 
operation which we were able to give. 

In addition to the motors, we gave cash to the extent 
of 488,443 francs and materials and supplies of the value 
of 77,585.20 francs or a total of 566,028.93 francs. 

In "The Friends Ambulance Unit 1914-1919" by Mea- 
burn Tatham and James E. Miles, recognition of this 
service is made in the following way : 

"Colonel Bicknell, the Commissioner to Belgium of the 
American Red Cross and his associates, in the course of 
their investigations made during 1917, discovered that, 
though civilian needs were not at that time great, the 



172 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Friends' Ambulance Unit had the largest existing organi- 
zation and the necessary experience for undertaking any 
work that might arise. They decided to assist where as- 
sistance was most wanted and when the call came in the 
spring of 1918, they liberally placed large resources at 
the unit's disposal. It is no exaggeration to say that 
the unit could not otherwise have undertaken one-quarter 
of the work it actually performed from then down to 
the end. It was relieved of all financial anxiety at a time 
when the raising of additional funds for emergency work 
was becoming increasingly difficult and it received the 
valuable loan of a small fleet of heavy lorries indispensa- 
ble for revitaillement, evacuation and salvage work. The 
unit had but to ask for clothing and food supplies for re- 
lief work and the American Red Cross stores were at its 
disposal. And what was more, it received also the benefit 
of their counsel and sympathy, always wise and always 
appreciated. In another way the connection with the 
American Red Cross was a close one because during 1918 
several members of that body were attached for service 
with the unit, some of them later taking a prominent part 
in Belgian relief work after the armistice. The unit per- 
haps received no greater compliment than the confidence 
thus placed in it." * 

One striking feature of our cooperation was the re- 
moval of the Hospital Alexandra. The Commissioner spent 
a night there when both shelling and bombing were going 
on. He saw the patients taken hurriedly from their beds 
and carried from the utter darkness of the hospital to the 
dim light of the underground retreat which the Quakers 
had built themselves. N"o matter how tenderly they were 
lifted, it was bad business, both physically and psychically. 
Sometimes they were taken down two or three times a 
night. A long range shell had already fallen on the 
hospital but it hit a spot where a barrack had burned. 

*PP. 65, 66. 



QUAKERS IN ACTION AT THE FRONT 173 

Splinters from bombs and bullets from air craft bad al- 
ready punctured tbe roofs. Tbougb no patients bad been 
wounded, tbe Commissioner took up vigorously tbe find- 
ing of a new place less dangerous. Tbese conditions bad 
to be met. It bad to be in tbe Dunkirk area as tbe unit 
would never consent to leave tbis area so peculiarly in 
need of tbeir service. It bad to be less dangerous or tbere 
would be no object in going. It bad to be within tbeir 
financial means. 

At Petite Syntbe out two miles on tbe otber side of 
Dunkirk toward Calais, a sanatorium was found that met 
tbe first two conditions and tbe American Red Cross took 
over tbe responsibility for tbe rent and tbe entire expense 
of removal. . 

Tbe labor gang of tbe unit was set to work quickly to 
make tbings ready at Petite Syntbe but in tbe nigbt of 
Marcb 24, 1918, under very heavy bombardment the evac- 
uation was ordered at 2 A. M. and completed by daylight 
without waiting for the alterations or repairs projected. 

When a week or so later one of the portable barracks 
used as a ward was moved, a huge shell fell on tbe exact 
spot from which the patients had been taken away. Tbe 
hospital had gone just in the nick of time. 

Another chance for especial sympathy and help came 
August 11, 1918, when the Hotel Pyl was completely de- 
stroyed by a heavy bomb. Alfred Gr. Vail, one of the 
men of the American Friends' Unit, whom we had placed 
here as an additional helper, was carried down four stories 
with the falling walls and floors, but was unhurt. Two 
others, fine English lads, Proctor and Kitching, were 
killed. Mordey was imprisoned under wreckage for some 
hours but was saved by a beam wedged across a solid oak 
chest. The loss of life would have been heavy had not 
Captain Tatbam sent most of the men into the large dug- 
outs. 

"Thanks to tbe generosity of the American Red Cross," 
wrote Captain Tatham, "all losses both of the unit and of 



174 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

individual members were made good by that body, giving 
further proof by this friendship in need that they were 
friends in deed." 

When the Germans made their great drive in the spring 
of 1918 at Armentieres and almost up to Hazebrouck, 
hundreds of Belgian and French refugees were carried 
to the rail heads, and thousands of dollars worth of prop- 
erty were salvaged. 

Of all the joint operations carried on by the Friends' 
Ambulance Unit and American Red Cross, no more grati- 
fying example of quick action based on preparations long 
made can be found than in the work of October and No- 
vember, 1918, in the liberated areas. The Germans had 
retreated, all Belgium west of Ghent was liberated, the un- 
believable had happened, the people at last were free, when 
all at once the Germans turned at bay on the Scheldt and 
fought back with great fierceness so that they might main- 
tain an orderly retreat. 

All of this Belgium west of Ghent was badly isolated 
in two ways : The retreating German Armies establishing 
new fighting lines on the Scheldt made it impossible for 
the Commission for Relief in Belgium to send food for the 
inhabitants in that area as they had done throughout the 
war. And likewise the destruction of roads and bridges 
by the Germans as they retreated to delay pursuit, added 
to the difficulty of passing over the belt of destroyed 
country where the fighting had gone on for four years — 
left thousands of people for a short time without food. At 
this time the Allied Armies, the Belgian Minister of the 
Interior, the Friends and the American Red Cross all 
helped save the day. The warehouses at Adinkerke proved 
to be the support and stay in this hour of need for which 
they had been built months before. The Quaker boys drove 
our heavy trucks forward against almost insuperable ob- 
stacles. 

A movement of civilians out of the liberated areas, 
over the destroyed country to Ypres, Poperinghe, Furnes 



QUAKERS IN ACTION AT THE FRONT 175 

and La Panne was begun. At Poperinghe, especially, con- 
ditions were very bad and the unit opened a hospital 
October 27, under the American Red Cross doctor, which 
took care of 34 patients the first week. But this move- 
ment down over the almost impassable No-Man's-Land was 
soon stopped. 

Tragic things were happening up in the little villages 
just liberated back of the new front. The Germans shelled 
with gas shells and there were hundreds of new civilian 
casualties. Pneumonia and influenza broke out among 
the poorly nourished people just freed. At Courtrai, a 
beautiful old Flemish city of some 32,000 people, the re- 
lief forces waged one of the last great battles of the war. 
The existing Belgian hospitals, overcrowded, under- 
manned, almost bare of necessary equipment, did what 
they could. But the Friends and the American Red Cross 
together here put a little hospital in the Ambulance du 
Fort, where there had been a military hospital of the 
Germans. 

The staff and equipment from the hospital at Haze- 
brouck had been moved up to Tourcoing October 22. It 
stayed there only five days as the French doctors could 
cope with the situation and when word came of conditions 
at Courtrai, it was sent quickly to the Ambulance du Fort. 
Conditions became fully as tragic as in the first months 
of the war. "A really terrible situation," the sober 
Friends called it. The civilians in this region, untrained 
like their brethren back of the Allies, to the ways of shell- 
ing, had run to their cellars and lain there all night in the 
gas. The lorries brought load after load of these victims 
to the little hospital. Every bed was filled. Stretchers lay 
about on the floor. Scores kept coming, some more lightly 
gassed, walking with pitiable appeals for help. The court- 
yard was crowded with relatives of the victims. Doctor 
Manning, the Chief, got army doctors and orderlies to 
help and the Belgian Sisters of Charity worked without 
rest. "Old men, women and little children lay there 



176 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

tortured, scorched, choking, their blinded eyes bandaged 
up, their lungs torn by the pitiless fumes." 

Though the deaths in ten days reached a total of 178, 
many were saved who would have died without this help. 

If it be a noble thing to put an end to dreadful torture, 
and to give people another chance for life, then we can 
call this little rude provisional hospital in Courtrai one 
of the noblest institutions of the war. 

When the Friends' Ambulance Unit was demobilized 
early in 1919, we took over William Mordey and some 
thirty of his men into the direct service of the American 
Red Cross to take the supervision of our warehouses for the 
destroyed areas of Belgium. When the Commission to 
Belgium closed its work April 15, 1919, these men re- 
mained for another year of service of reconstruction under 
direction of our Paris office. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

Dr. Park's Great Experiment 

OODS HUTCHINSON says in "The Doctor in 
War" that war is full of contradictions, that while 
waged solely between armed men, its heaviest slaughter 
has always been among women and children, and that 
while it aims at the destruction of enemy life by its own 
legitimate and special weapons, it actually destroys and 
loses five times as many soldiers by disease as in battle, 
that while the soldier who enlists thinks of getting killed 
by shot or shell, until this war he stood in far greater 
danger of dying from typhoid or summer cholera or 
pneumonia. 

All this is familiar reading to those who have paid any 
attention to such important phases of the history of the 
World War. The doctor as well as the surgeon will be 
given high honor in the public mind when we begin to 
measure his work in terms of the dear friends we still 
have about us who in any other war would have been sac- 
rificed. 

"By wiping out epidemics," said Dr. Hutchinson, "the 
doctor has actually kept the death rate among the civil 
populations of the Allied countries as low as, and in some 
cases lower than it was before the war. By redoubling 
the care and protection of young children almost as many 
additional young lives have been saved as adult ones have 
been lost on the field of battle." 

The American Bed Cross in France and in Free Bel- 
gium, and the doctors of the Hoover Commission in Occu- 
pied Belgium and France, set before themselves first of all 
to save as many little lives as they possibly could, 

177 



178 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

but secondly, in so doing, to arouse that general interest in 
the process which if once aroused stops the dreadful waste 
of a nation's most valuable and precious asset. 

That is what Dr. W. P. Lucas and Dr. J. H. Mason 
Knox did for the Commission to France of the American 
Red Cross, and Dr. Knox, Dr. Park and Dr. Ramsey did 
for the Commission to Belgium. 

We were lucky enough to have Dr. Knox assigned to us 
as Chief Medical Advisor and he at once secured Dr. Park 
as the man to do our job. 

Dr. Park, now Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale Uni- 
versity Medical School, was at that time an Assistant 
Professor of the John Hopkins University Medical School 
at Baltimore. 

We concentrated medical work in France at Le Havre 
and Rouen, first, because thousands of Belgians crowded 
those cities; second, because our headquarters and the 
headquarters of the Belgian Government were at Le Havre, 
and third, because the Commission in France had more 
than it could do and wanted us to take over the work for 
French as well as Belgians in these important cities. 

Napoleon called Le Havre and Rouen "one great city 
of which the Seine is the main street." 

It is no reflection on the French authorities to say that 
in the fall of 1917, we found conditions dreadful among 
the Belgian refugees in Le Havre and especially among 
mothers and babies. All French civilian agencies were 
undermanned and overworked. Nor was the disease and 
death incident to overcrowding and other hardships lim- 
ited to the Belgians. French babies of whom they could 
ill spare one, were dying fast. We proposed a Children's 
Health Center to the Minister of the Interior, M. Berryer. 
Catholic though he was, keenly aware of how jealously 
some of his associates insisted on "hands off the chil- 
dren," M. Berryer put first and foremost the saving of 
the lives that were being sacrificed. At the same time, 
he pointed out clearly the steps to be taken to carry along 



DR. PARK'S GREAT EXPERIMENT 179 

with us all varieties of Belgian public sentiment and to 
make sure that the mothers would use our health center 
if we got it. He wished also that the French should have 
the right to use the center on equal terms with the Bel- 
gians, saying that "The most we can do is little enough to 
repay what the French have done for us." 

It looked for a time as if inability to find a place in 
which to house the project would prevent fulfillment of 
the plans. Nothing less than the power of a Cabinet offi- 
cer would have accomplished it. The only place available 
was the Salle Franklin or Hall Franklin, a brick build- 
ing 110 feet long, 58 feet wide and 3 stories high, situ- 
ated on a small park in a very crowded part of Le Havre. 
It was occupied by a group of devoted patriotic French 
ladies who were running a French military hospital, not 
needed at the time, but who were so interested in it that 
they could not see the larger need of the babies. It was 
hard on them but a word to the French Government was 
enough. Repairs were made, the building painted and 
cleaned throughout. Dr. Park and Miss Wilcox, an Ameri- 
can nurse from Hawaii, arrived January 15. They got a 
Belgian nurse speaking French, Flemish and English 
March 29 and began house to house visiting. They moved 
into the Salle Franklin April 12. 

It was an Allied undertaking. Under Belgian doctors 
and nurses exclusively there were : 

1. A maternity hospital and a maternity consultation. 
Up to December 31, 1918, 224 births took place in the 
institution. Instruction in home care was given. 

2. La Pouponniere as the Belgians called it — a tem- 
porary shelter for little children up to four years of age 
whose mothers were working or in hospital or in other 
ways too disabled to care for the children. Especially was 
it a great service and joy to mothers awaiting confinement 
under the same roof. It had from 20 to 35 inmates per 
month. 

Under Dr. Park there were carried on: 



180 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

1. Beginning April 12, 1918, a dispensary to which 
mothers brought sick babies and young children. 

2. Beginning August 10, 1918, a campaign against 
infant mortality in the thickly populated section of Le 
Havre known as the Quartier St. Frangois. 

3. Opening on September 28, 1918, a barrack hospital 
of 20 beds for' children. 

4. The taking over of infant consultations run by the 
French in four different quarters of the city in the fall 
of 1918. 

5. A consultation for normal infants. 

6. A training school for nurses' aids. 

A thing which struck both French and Belgians and 
which the Minister of the Interior spoke of in his final 
report was the organization of the work so that poor 
mothers and babies did not have to wait long hours to 
receive attention as is often the case on the Continent but 
had each a definite time assigned. 

Another thing the Minister said was : "The devotion of 
the American staff was greatly appreciated by the working 
people both French and Belgian, who have come to see in 
America, more and more, a kind and generous nation — 
the protector of the unfortunate." 

Scientific, accurate, precise, careful to a degree though 
he is, nobody could enter an institution run by Dr. Park 
without feeling a deep genuine and all pervading human 
sympathy. The humblest, saddest person felt this at the 
Salle Franklin. 

Though the French and Belgians had given food to 
expectant mothers and mother and babies, they now were 
to see food prescribed like medicine; and where prescrip- 
tions could not be filled, the American Red Cross stepped 
in and did it. Most baby ills like most adult ills are ills 
of feeding. Dr. Rowland Gr. Freeman, of New York, 
former President of the American Pediatric Association, 
said one day, "Nature made us nearly automatic. Breath- 
ing is automatic. The heart is automatic. She left one 









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pq 



pq 



O 



« 



E 
< 



DR. PARK'S GREAT EXPERIMENT 181 

job to us — feeding, arid we bungle that terribly." If we 
sin against the light practically every day of onr lives in 
the rich United States, what about the chances of right 
feeding for a mother in the slums of Le Havre, in the 
fourth year of the war and with most foods substitutes. 

Dr. Park disseminated an entirely new idea to many 
of these people that food is medicine, or that all the medi- 
cine needed is food, in most cases, of the correct kinds and 
in correct quantities and at the right times. 

On his staff, Dr. Park had a social service visitor to 
follow up cases in their homes, seeing what the best hos- 
pitals everywhere are coming to see, that there is no use 
to order something done at a consultation, if the effect of 
it is to be completely neutralized by something undis- 
closed in the home. 

These visitors of the Salle Franklin secured the re- 
moval of families to better quarters, made it possible to 
send children sometimes into the country, and saw to it 
that the mothers followed instructions about feeding. 
Their work led gradually to the forming of a French 
committee made up of various social agencies to work to- 
gether for the rehabilitation of families, victims in one 
way or another of the war. 

There were two outgrowths of the work which were more 
important even than the great work actually done at the 
time. Both mean saving many lives. The first is the 
detailed report of Dr. Park. The report as a whole was 
never published. A description of the dispensary was 
published in Archives de medicine des Enfants, 1919, 
XXII, ]STo. 8, p. 393 and in another article in the Modern 
Hospital, August, 1919, III, No. 2. A report of a certain 
phase of the work was published at the expense of the 
American Red Cross in a pamphlet form in French. 

The second lies in the fact that the French took over 
the work and now are carrying it on. There were local 
jealousies and divisions on the way. There was lack of 
monev. But the Salle Franklin had so demonstrated it- 



182 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

self that general interest was aroused in Le Havre. 
French doctors who had proclaimed the message of baby- 
saving for years with no result, suddenly found them- 
selves in a movement which was popular. 

Dr. Park worked cautiously, with untiring patience, 
and at last presented to the Commissioner his plan. It 
was to close February 10, 1919, to turn over the barrack 
hospital and equipment to the Belgians to be transported 
to Belgium, to turn over all other work to the French, to 
pay all bills and leave two American doctors to help until 
May 1, 1919, during what was called a "transition period" 
— and on May 1, 1919, to put the whole burden on a 
new French organization, partly municipal and partly 
private, called L' Union des Oeuvres de L'Enfance du 
Havre, leaving at that time a subsidy of 25,000 francs, a 
trained nurse and a trained social worker. 

In all, Dr. Park and his staff saw 8,426 old patients, 
2,520 new patients, made 2,750 house visits, vaccinated 
1,463 cases for smallpox, took in 195 hospital patients, 
making in all 15,354 helpful human contacts with patients 
alone. 

The American Eed Cross gave a total of 403,436.07 
francs in cash and supplies for this work. Dr. Park 
was decorated. 

Better than most decorations though are these words 
of Dr. Gilbert, the great French public health leader of 
Le Havre to Dr. Park : 

"By your enterprising spirit, your method and your 
deep faith in the good to be done, you have created an 
institution which, I can assure you, will survive your 
departure from Le Havre. The idea of this work, which 
has long been in the minds of the physicians, the public 
health workers and the philanthropists of Le Havre, has 
hitherto, for lack of cooperation, of funds and of support 
from the authorities, failed of realization. 

"You, a foreigner, with the powerful American Red 
Cross behind you, overcame the first obstacles, and al- 



DR. PARK'S GREAT EXPERIMENT 183 

though in the beginning somewhat skeptical, we soon 
joined you enthusiastically in the project which assured 
the fulfillment of all our wishes. Of this, the essential 
points are the permanent establishment at the dispensary 
of detailed, careful and repeated examinations to be sup- 
plemented with house visits by your public health nurses, 
who enter firmly, but tactfully, the very heart of the city's 
misery, the Quartier St. Franqois, which has been until 
now an unexplored field of the charitable organizations 
of Le Havre. You have succeeded completely and in a 
very short time, in spite of the considerable difficulties 
which were bound to obstruct your path as they had ours. 
We have your example before us. And like you, we are 
determined no longer to be checked in our work and in 
our progress." . 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Against Tuberculosis 

THROUGH three agencies the American Red Cross 
helped the Belgians deal with the great scourge tu- 
berculosis — the Minister of the Interior, for refugee civil- 
ians, the Surgeon General of the Army, for soldiers and 
the Queen for the liberated regions. 

The Belgians did not have to be urged to take meas- 
ures against tuberculosis. They were fully alive to recent 
discoveries in the fight against this plague and to the 
possibility of doing away with it altogether. The thing 
was constantly on their minds and often came up in con- 
versation at Le Havre — not so much because of the rav- 
ages of the disease in the trenches, for that was less than 
reported, or even because of the real menace from it among 
refugees, but because they were always thinking of the 
seven and a half million people in Occupied Belgium 
and they knew that underfeeding and worry and fear and 
an abnormal life generally were bound to show in a spread 
of this disease. 

Moreover, the government at Le Havre was profoundly 
impressed by the work done by Dr. Livingston Farrand 
and his Rockefeller Foundation Commission for the Pre- 
vention of Turberculosis in France and by the work of 
the Tuberculosis Bureau of the American Red Cross for 
France cooperating with it. It was a striking demonstra- 
tion of what could be done by modern methods. We did 
not attempt to form a Tuberculosis Bureau but we speed- 
ily found out what the government was doing. 

The Minister of the Interior had bought a chateau with 
surrounding farms at Chanay in the Auvergne, France, 

184 



AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 185 

and established there a sanatorium of 75 beds and a hos- 
pital of 20 beds. This institution was on high ground in 
the Jura mountains overlooking the lovely Rhone valley. 
Nowhere in Belgium itself, not even in the Ardennes coun- 
try could such a place be found. To this place, the Minis- 
ter sent the poor unfortunates among Belgian refugees 
stricken with the disease, accomplishing two things: pro- 
tection of the family and neighbors against contagion and 
giving the victim himself a chance for life. We found 
the sanatorium overtaxed and many people waiting for a 
chance to go. At the request of the Minister we bought 
the Chateau of Job near Vichy for an auxiliary sana- 
torium providing 150 additional beds, paying 150,000 
francs for a property which originally had cost a million 
francs. After the armistice the government decided to 
keep both of 'these institutions as government sanatoria. 
Wise management made this possible. Enough land was 
sold off around Chanay to pay both the original cost of the 
property, 178,000 francs, and furnishings and alterations 
costing 200,000 francs more. 

The tuberculosis experts of the Commission to France of 
the Red Cross called our attention to the condition of the 
Belgian military hospital for tubercular soldiers at Mont- 
pellier in France. The water supply was inadequate, 
bathing facilities were practically nonexistent, there were 
360 patients and sixty more expected. Early in Septem- 
ber of 1918 we gave 63,500 francs to put through a new 
installation for water supply and baths. We increased this 
to 80,500 francs when it was found inadequate, but the 
war moved faster than the Surgeon General and nothing 
was done before the armistice. Early in January, 1919, 
the Commissioner authorized the spending of this money 
for a tuberculosis sanatorium in connection with the camp 
of Beverloo in Belgium. 

In Brussels, on August 1, 1918, a preliminary meet- 
ing had been held to organize a "National Cooperative 
Society against Tuberculosis," and on October 17, the per- 



186 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

maiient organization was formed. This was brought about 
by the Belgian National Committee under M. Emile 
Francqui which had done the work of feeding Belgium in 
cooperation with Mr. Hoover's Commission for Relief in 
Belgium. The Belgian National Committee had taken the 
task of keeping the Belgian population alive and vigorous. 
All their work they found endangered by the rapid spread 
of tuberculosis. As M. Ernest Solvay said, "Not only has 
the number of deaths due to tuberculosis doubled in cer- 
tain regions, but the cases of pre-tuberculosis are becoming 
legion." 

The National Committee tried to deal with the situation 
by subsidizing the already existing "National Belgian 
League against Tuberculosis." As Mr. Francqui said: 
"The National Committee enabled the League to increase 
its dispensaries from 25 to 100. In 1914 they had 5,000 
patients. In 1918, 50,000. Before the National Com- 
mittee intervened the budget did not come up to 100,000 
francs. It is now well over 10,000,000 francs." The new 
project united all parties and all existing organizations 
in one great cooperative movement and started off with 
subscriptions of between eight and nine million francs. 

At about the same time on the other side of the fighting 
lines in Free Belgium, Her Majesty, the Queen, had pre- 
sented the matter to us. She could not know precisely 
what was happening in Brussels but she kept reasonably 
well informed. She did know that tuberculosis was one 
of the great dangers to her country — doubly so because of 
the hardships of war. We took no definite action until we 
reached Brussels, when at the suggestion of Her Majesty 
we had a conference with Dr. Bordet, director of the 
Pasteur Institute of Brabant, the great Belgian scientist 
who since the armistice has been given the Nobel prize. 
We got detailed figures and charts from him showing two 
striking things: first, that tuberculosis had doubled and 
trebled in the greater part of Belgium, and second, that 
the death rate for children from zero to one year had gone 



AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 187 

down during the war owing to the activity of baby saving 
organizations and "canteens maternal" which gave aid on 
condition that mothers would nurse their own babies. 

The Belgian Government was very anxious to get Dr. 
Farrand to Brussels in the hope that he could undertake 
for Belgium what he had done so successfully for Trance. 
This was impossible as the work of the Rockefeller Foun- 
dation for France, while a war relief measure, was also 
considered a demonstration for others to follow if they 
would, while the Foundation went on to do other things. 

Dr. Farrand, now the President of Cornell University, 
had just agreed to take the chairmanship of the Central 
Committee of the American Red Cross and could not give 
himself to one country as he had to France during the 
war. We, therefore, made an appropriation to her 
Majesty, the Queen, of 1,250,000 francs to use in this fight 
asking her to choose the agency but stipulating that the 
principles laid down by the Rockefeller Foundation for 
such a campaign should be followed as far as possible. 

(1) Educational propaganda. 

(2) Dispensaries as centers of diagnosis and for 
proper distribution of cases. Examination of all children 
exposed. Treatment of pre-disposed. 

(3) Visiting nurses, including training in one year 
course of girls of the country. 

(4) Hospital for advanced cases to prevent infection. 

(5) Sanitoria for favorable cases. 

(6) Other institutions for bone and joint cases. 

Eventually the Queen chose the new cooperative so- 
ciety organized by the National Committee as the agency 
to use this appropriation. 

Finally, we supplied one thousand beds with mattresses, 
sheets, pillows and blankets, secured from American Army 
hospitals which were closing, aud put them in a large 
sanatorium in Belgium under the Minister of Justice for 
returned tubercular prisoners. 

The last official trip of the Commissioner to Belgium 



188 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

was to Cannes, France, the first week in April, 1919, to 
attend the medical conference of the Committee of Red 
Cross Societies, which grew into the League of Red Cross 
Societies. 

The conclusion reached by this conference was that it 
was "a natural and most desirable evolution of the Red 
Cross to extend its functions of relief during war to that 
of promoting public health during peace." This view 
was concurred in by the delegates of all the countries rep- 
resented, American, British, Italian, French and Japa- 
nese. Sections were organized on Preventive Medicine, 
Tuberculosis, Malaria, Venereal Diseases, Nursing and 
Publications. On tuberculosis a report was adopted, 
drafted by Dr. Calmette of France and of which Dr. 
Biggs said : "I regard it as a concise summary of all the 
accumulated experience on tuberculosis." This report is 
as follows : 

REPORT ADOPTED AND PRESENTED TO THE CONFERENCE BY 
THE SECTION ON TUBERCULOSIS 

"Recognizing the wide prevalence of tuberculosis, its 
incidence at all ages, and its importance as a cause of ex- 
cessive mortality, disability, distress and economic laws, 
we recommend that special attention be given to the fight 
against this disease in the plan of an organization having 
in view common action on the part of Red Cross Societies. 

We believe that in any organized campaign against tu- 
berculosis the following factors are fundamental and in- 
dispensable : 

1. Dispensaries on an adequate scale, furnished with 
laboratories and appropriate equipment and affording pro- 
vision for early diagnosis, including the examination of 
contacts by expert physicians ; and with especially trained 
visiting nurses, who will carry into the homes of patients 
the necessary care, instruction and advice, who will espe- 
cially consider the needs of children, and who will direct 
the patient to appropriate agencies for this purpose. 



AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 189 

2. Provision for the careful, regular inspection of 
school children with a view to the early detection of tuber- 
culosis. 

3. Hospital treatment, on an adequate scale, of acute, 
advanced and hopeless cases of tuberculosis, separated 
from other cases not infected with tuberculosis. 

4. Sanatorium facilities for all suitable cases of tu- 
berculosis. 

5. Continuous popular education regarding tuberculo- 
sis, its causes and prevention, by all suitable means and 
agencies. 

It is evident that tuberculosis is inextricably associated 
with the general living and working conditions of the 
people; and we therefore recommend the encouragement 
of all legitimate efforts directed toward the improvement 
of these conditions. We regard as of particular importance 
in this connection the care of children and the problems 
of housing, of cleaning, of nutrition and of alcoholism. 

We recommend the institution of appropriate meas- 
ures to prevent the transmission of tuberculosis through 
infected milk. 

We approve the establishment of open air schools for 
accommodation of children already infected by, or sus- 
pected of, tuberculosis; and measures should be taken to 
protect children against contagion in the household, by 
placing them with healthy families in the country or in 
special asylums when it is not practicable to remove the 
infected patient from his family. 

We call attention to the importance of the extension of 
the open air principle to all institutions and places where 
many individuals are housed together, such as barracks, 
orphanages, workhouses, penitentiaries, and the like. 

Experience has shown us the importance of care- 
ful supervision of the tuberculosis patient during the en- 
tire period of his illness. We therefore urge the need 
for close cooperation between the several institutional fac- 
tors (dispensaries, hospitals, sanatoria, etc.), and the 



190 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

more extended development of skilled social service under 
medical direction. 

We think that attention should be drawn to the 
great risk to which tuberculosis patients are exposed 
through the exploitation of alleged cures without scientific 
authority. 

Inasmuch as a problem of particular difficulty is 
that of providing suitable occupations for those patients 
with tuberculosis, able to perform a certain amount of 
work under favorable conditions, we recommend the en- 
couragement of efforts for the establishment of agricul- 
tural colonies and the organization of suitable indus- 
tries which should be linked with the dispensaries and 
sanatoria under medical supervision. 

Recognizing that accurate knowledge of the distribution 
of tuberculosis is an essential preliminary to its control 
by public authorities in any community, we approve the 
principle of compulsory notification of tuberculosis to the 
health authorities under appropriate regulations. 

We call special attention to the capital importance of 
scientific research in the field of tuberculosis and the col- 
lection of information as to all factors bearing upon the 
prevalence and distribution of the disease." 

The Commission took this report to Belgium for Her 
Majesty and her advisors with a suggestion that it would 
bankrupt Belgium to attempt to build sanatoria and hos- 
pitals for all the cases needing treatment and that an 
effective campaign could be waged along these other lines. 
The Belgians, because they were up to date in these mat- 
ters, welcomed suggestions of this kind. At the same time 
with Her Majesty, General Melis, Dr. Depage and others, 
we took up the question of participation by the Belgian 
Red Cross Society in the great campaign for public health 
launched at Cannes by the League of Red Cross Societies. 

There was a long controversy between those who would 
hold the Red Cross strictly to "work for sick and wounded 
soldiers in time of war" and those who wanted Belgium 



AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 191 

to take her place with the other great Red Cross Societies 
of the world. The decision of little Belgium was for the 
big preventive constructive program. Dr. Depage now rep- 
resents Belgium in the League of Red Cross Societies. 



CHAPTER XXV 

For the Mutiles 

THE war both destroyed lives and completely altered 
lives. It hurled men up and down the social scale. 
It made all kinds of cataclysmic changes, but no changes 
were greater than where well, normal men, who could 
see, who could walk, who could use their arms, suddenly 
lost members on which their old ways of life absolutely 
depended. The mechanic lost his arm or fingers, the 
plowman a foot and often both, some lost limbs at the 
ankle, others at the knee, others at the hip. Once in a 
while a man lost legs, arms and eyes and still lived on for 
a time, but nature is merciful and ordains that a torso 
in such a condition is not apt to stand the shock. Some 
lost their faces and refused to let their family see the horri- 
ble result. All these form the great company of the 
mutilated or mutiles as they are known in Belgium and 
France. 

In the midst of the sadness of it, the pain and the 
tragedy of it, this shining fact emerges, that the people of 
this world, war-ridden, suspicious, jealous, hateful to one 
another, still have reached a stage of development when 
every civilized nation declares that these mutilated are 
not waste human products but potential assets, and that 
they must be made real assets. 

It wasn't so many years ago that the mutilated in war 
sat down and sold shoe strings or lived out helpless, hope- 
less, unhappy lives, with their families or in institutions. 

]STow the schools for the reeducation of the mutilated 
transform these hopeless cripples into useful creative lives 

192 



FOR THE MUTILES 193 

and even blaze the trail for other schools where men are not 
crippled. 

The Belgians started more qnickly than anybody else 
connected with the World War to deal scientifically with 
the mutilated. 

They declared that no mutilated man should be dis- 
charged from the army, even if it was clear that he 
would never serve again, but should stay in uniform and 
under orders until he was both healed and trained. 

There was some conflict in the beginning between the 
surgeons and the educators, one asserting that the prob- 
lem at root was medical and surgical and that the train- 
ing should begin while the man was still on his cot or 
limping about the hospital. The other just as vehemently 
declared that only men who knew education could work 
out a scheme ' of education for men whether they were 
whole men or mutilated men. 

Compromises were made, and in the first year of the 
war the Belgians organized the institution which set the 
example to both Europe and America, at Le Havre, at 
Rouen, at Mortain and at Port Villez, the two latter soon 
being combined at Port Villez, some forty miles down the 
Seine from Paris. 

When the United States went into the war, our War 
Department had translated the report of the first year at 
these institutions by Leon de Paeuw, first issued in France 
in 1916, and retranslated and republished by Princeton 
University under the title "The Vocational Reeducation 
of Maimed Soldiers" with a preface by Madame Henry 
Carton de Wiart. 

The claims of this work are fully justified: "that Bel- 
gium despite its devastated and crippled condition was the 
first nation to establish an efficient system of caring for 
her disabled soldiers," and that this system of vocational 
education did three things — restored to a maimed man 
his confidence in himself and "zest for life," his activity 
and his usefulness. 



194 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

The mental and moral factors were fully as great as the 
physical. The changes for most men were so sudden and 
so paralyzing in their completeness that for a time they 
were overwhelmed. 

In the trenches they had said, "I'm willing to go if I 
have to, but I don't want to be made helpless," and behold 
they were blind or without arms or legs or paralyzed 
from the hips down. 

The Belgians had one advantage in being exiles. The 
wounded men could not be sent to their families, for their 
families were behind the German lines. There was not 
the resistance of short-sighted men and short-sighted rela- 
tives to treatment and training which was such an obsta- 
cle with the French. 

At Ste. Adresse we found the Minister Helleputte car- 
rying on the work at the Depot des Invalides, begun by 
his brother-in-law, the Minister Schollaert, who had died 
suddenly the year before. Both of these ministers had 
great human sympathy and cheered the men by frequent 
visits and genuine interest. Through their influence the 
government furnished this private school with subsidies 
and with raw material and with an officer to exercise mili- 
tary control. The men sold many toys and plaster work, 
baskets and shoes. 

We gave the school the sum of 50,000 francs in the 
summer of 1918 for a new building, but upon the change 
in the military situation we held up work on the building. 
When the armistice came we doubled the appropriation 
and directed it to moving the school back to Louvain, 
where it became a part of the University of Louvain. 

We found Port Villez an inspiring sight. Twelve or 
fourteen hundred men were being recreated. 

Speaking of Port Villez — Madame Henry Carton de 
Wiart quoted Emerson — "The only mortal malady is inca- 
pacity to improve." 

Here we found some men, prevented from following an 
old vocation they had entered by chance, discovering their 



FOR THE MUTILES 195 

real bent and making an even greater success than they 
had before they were wounded. One man who had been 
a common laborer showed positive genius at artistic letter- 
ing. 

All kinds of startling changes took place: A circus 
clown became a decorative painter; a street paver became 
a pastry cook, excelling in puff paste and frangipane; a 
shepherd who had lost a leg became a harness maker. 

The man who had just arrived was examined by the 
surgical staff to see what was physically possible, by the 
school staff to see what was mentally possible and was 
then taken slowly about and allowed to see forty-eight 
trades in operation and his old comrades happily at work 
at them. This helped him to a choice and supplied the 
moral stimulus. 

There was everything from expert accounting to black- 
smithing. In the carpenter shop, he saw men making 
doors and window frames, benches, desks, chests, cup- 
boards, and men not strong making saw handles, and 
planes. 

In the machine shop he saw men operating delicate 
machinery, with artificial arms and iron fingers, which 
grasped the tools almost as well as if they were of flesh 
and blood. 

In the electrical department, perhaps, he met mutilated 
men just back from Rouen, where with only one director 
they had installed electricity for a hospital of 1,200 beds ; 
or he saw three great modern bakeries, with electric knead- 
ing troughs and masonry ovens built by his mutilated 
comrades; or he came in contact with men at work on a 
large building for the "School of Construction and Design" 
moved up from Mortain, or at work on a new water mill 
to grind wheat. 

Some of his comrades were teaching. Two fishermen 
from Blankenburghe, in the harness department, were 
teaching men how to make fly nets. 

Out on the farms, created from stump lots, he found a 



196 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

chance to learn agriculture, horticulture, care of animals, 
breeding of poultry and fish. 

In leather, in metal, in wood, in concrete, on desks and 
easels, or out on the land, he saw more kinds of things 
being done than he had ever seen in one place in his life 
and almost always he made a choice with enthusiasm. 

"Experience has taught us," says De Paeuw, "that 
when a man is unable to take up his former trade his 
choice generally falls upon one in some way connected 
with the old occupation. A mason or carpenter will choose 
the vocation of draughtsman or architect's clerk. A stone 
cutter wishes to be a stone dresser. A smith aspires to 
be a designer of artistic iron work. A moulder who can no 
longer lift the heavy moulds will try to become a modeler. 
A house painter who can not now climb on scaffolding 
naturally turns to the painting of signs and advertisements 
in a work shop or to the decoration of china. A hair 
dresser who can not endure standing becomes a wig maker. 
Farmhands or cow herds who have lost their legs become 
market gardeners, and farriers turn to lathes." 

We found need of a barrack for the blind and quickly 
supplied it at a cost of 17,500 francs and 5,000 francs for 
furnishings. We would have done more had there been 
need. 

With some men it was of course simply a question of 
restoring movement and not a question of reeducation. 
The Bon Secour at Rouen, under Doctor Lemaire, did im- 
portant work. We gave Bon Secour an operating table and 
other supplies to the value of 5,924 francs. Likewise the 
Belgian front hospitals directed all their surgery to the 
end of helping the mutiles earn their living. The surgeons 
of the Belgian Red Cross did new and startling things 
with amputations, insisting that men must not remain 
in bed until they lose balance and flexibility of muscles. 
They had men walking on peg legs eight days after ampu- 
tation. 

In 1917, Dr. Depage and his associates aided by our sub- 



FOR THE MUTILES 197 

siclies did work at La Panne, both for the reeducation of 
the mutiles and for the manufacture of a new light arti- 
ficial leg much needed. Dustin in neurology, JSTeuman in 
restorative surgery, Van ISTeek in orthopedic surgery, Mar- 
tin in prothesis or fitting appliances and Rene Sand in 
vocational adaptation, made important studies. 

About this same time, Her Majesty, the Queen, took up 
with Dr. Depage the question of the civilian mutiles to 
which nobody else seemed to have paid any attention. 
Inhabitants of cities bombed by aviators and peasants liv- 
ing near the lines often were mangled as badly as soldiers. 

Her Majesty said that the state owed a duty to these war 
victims as well as to the soldiers, that they would be as- 
sets or liabilities after the war exactly the same as sol- 
diers, and that for its own protection Belgium must do 
something about it. Dr. Depage at once opened his hos- 
pital at Mortain to this class of unfortunates. 

Her Majesty brought the matter to our attention. After 
the armistice we turned over to her, as President of the 
Belgian Red Cross Society, the sum of 1,000,000 francs to 
use as a lever to bring together the different agencies deal- 
ing with the mutiles. 

Through the influence of a very important person, a 
committee was appointed of which the Commissioner to 
Belgium was a member, by whom a plan was worked out 
to put small schools for the mutiles, civil and military, in 
each province where the men could be trained near their 
homes — all under the direction, of the Minister of War. 
This plan is now in operation. 

At California House, London, England, was another, a 
home for the reeducation of Belgian mutiles, supported en- 
tirely for three years by gifts from America, and more 
particularly California. It was managed by Miss Julia 
Heyneman. Its funds ran short in the summer of 1918 
and it appealed to the American Red Cross for aid. It 
maintained in connection with the school a club called 
"Kitchener House," which furnished tea and lunch to the 



198 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

soldiers as well as amusements and classes. The charac- 
ter of the work was excellent and the standing high. The 
Commission to Belgium "helped out" on two occasions to 
the total amount of 32,180 francs. The work was wound 
up after the armistice. Five hundred men underwent 
treatment during three years and were trained for indus- 
trial and other pursuits. 



CHAPTER XXVI 
Some Great Days Toward the End 

IT was the night of September 30, 1918. The day be- 
fore the Belgian Army had made a great attack and 
the dark threatening forest of Houthulst, toward which 
the Belgians and British had looked for fonr years, was 
theirs. They had taken some four thousand German 
prisoners and made a four-mile advance along the moun- 
tain of Elanders. The Commissioner was dining in his 
little third floor apartment at La Panne with Vandevyvere, 
Minister of Finance, and Vandervelde, Minister of Sup- 
plies, as his guests. All at once Paul Hymans, Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, burst in, having come up from Le 
Havre for a conference with the King. He told us that 
Bulgaria had accepted the Allied terms. To all these men 
who knew international politics so well it was news so 
momentous and so joyful that they were almost stunned 
for a moment. Said Vandervelde, "It is more important 
than taking any city or position on the line. Cambrai or 
St. Quentin, or even Lille couldn't compare with it." 
Said Vandevyvere, "It is the beginning of the end." And 
so we had a very happy dinner in celebration. 

Days of intense activity followed, getting up supplies 
and people and helping the hospitals carry the great load 
that had come upon them. 

The common people of Flanders and the private sol- 
diers were astir over impending events but apparently did 
not dare let themselves hope that the end was near. 

Saturday, October 12, the Commissioner recorded in his 
journal at La Panne: "A driving wind and rain but 
a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions for everybody. The 

199 



200 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Minister Berryer just told us that the Germans had ac- 
cepted all the terms of peace and had sent a note to Wil- 
son yesterday; that Austria had threatened a separate 
peace unless Germany made peace at once. What of the 
poor boys killed today who have lived through the war 
up till now? We are wild with expectancy and anxious 
to get confirmation." 

Sunday, October 13. — "A day of intense joy with a re- 
action. This morning we got the text of the German note 
accepting Wilson's terms. There was great excitement 
in the streets. At every corner I was stopped. A soldier 
or nurse would come running with the question, 'Mon 
Colonel, is it true ? Is it over V Lunch with the Minis- 
ters Berryer and Poullet. Great joy. We are going to 
be in the villa of the Minister Poullet at Westend next 
Sunday. We are going to be in Brussels in a week. Then 
tonight, reaction, dinner with Depage at the hospital and 
news of a new Belgian and British attack to be made to- 
morrow. The deadly toll we are paying is forced to the 
front again. I dined in the midst of 2,000 wounded and 
then telegraphed Colonel Gibson in Paris for surgeons 
and nurses but fear they can't be spared." 

Monday, October 14. — "The great guns of the monitors 
just shook things at daybreak. The attack was on. Up 
early and away to Cassel, St. Omer, Lumbres, and back 
to Hazebrouck, Steenvoorde, Poperinghe and Ypres. Or- 
dered supplies into refugee clearing station at Lumbres, 
inspected civilian casualty clearing stations of the Friends' 
Ambulance Unit at Poperinghe and Ypres for which we 
are paying, and got to Ypres to welcome the first liber- 
ated civilians. Our camions are bringing down wounded 
soldiers as well as civilians today. Hospitals are over- 
taxed. Ypres was shelled heavily today on account of 
traffic. Glorious news tonight — we have taken Courtrai. 
These may be the last days of this terrible war." 

Tuesday, October 15. — "I am very sad today, thinking 
of Colonel Bremer killed yesterday. He was one of the 



SOME GREAT DAYS TOWARD THE END 201 

finest officers in the Belgian Army and one of the bravest 
men I ever knew. He knew on Saturday that he was 
going to attack near Zonnebeke on Monday, and he said, 
"I wish I could have lived through; I'd like to see what 
kind of a world it will be after the war, but it is not to 
be." He was badly hit and my friend, Dr. Foucher, 
rushed to him and was bending over him when a shell fell 
on them both." 

Wednesday, October 16. — "A close squeak tonight. Was 
coming from the villa of the King when a great shell 
came in without much of any scream, dropping almost 
straight down and "did in" the tribunal which I was 
passing — two houses together — hurling rubbish and men 
down together in the street. Got up quickly unhurt and 
helped a wounded man to the hospital. Went back and 
found the Judge dead and another man, and five other 
people whom we couldn't get from under the tons of stuff. 
The gendarmes and soldiers will dig all night if need be. 
They got a baby out unhurt. 

"Cooreman, the Prime Minister, is here in the apartment 
with me. Was in his car just ahead of me when the shell 
fell. A few seconds' delay and he would have been under 
it. Close escape also for the King and Queen as the shells 
tonight are 380's or 420's and they blow everything to 
pieces. They are coming in faster than I've ever known 
them in La Panne. The Minister Poullet says the battery 
shelling us tonight is a big one just beyond Ostend. Every- 
body in the house is in the cellar except the Minister and 
myself, but it is too dangerous down there for us. We'd 
rather go down with the house than have the house come 
down on us. I have no faith in any abri in La Panne ex- 
cept the one we built for Madame Kolin's babies. But it 
must be near the end." 

Thursday, October 17. — "Got up supplies today for new 
first aid stations. A busy day at many things. Down at 
hospital of Countess Van den Steen at Couthove, and found 
her overtaxed like everybody. Promised additional sup- 



202 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

plies at once. Strange sensations here these days. Ger- 
mans evacuating the coast. Ostend free. Came through 
Nieuport this afternoon. Impossible to think of it as 
safe but it is. Under cover of the heavy shelling last 
night, and leaving lights in their trenches, the Germans 
started away. As I woke up, I heard a noise in the 
street, went down and Colonel Joostens dashed around the 
corner and said, 'The Germans got out in the night. I 
am on my way to Ostend. My battery starts today. We 
will be there tomorrow.' It means unutterable things to 
La Panne which for four years has been always in danger. 
As I dashed for the hospital with the news, I saw a body 
come ashore — a fine young British naval officer. He had 
been in the water only a little while. It is that way 
always here — tragedy gripping us in our happiest mo- 
ments. Got the text of the President's message today. 
The King's Secretary was with me and said, 'He is one of 
the greatest men in history. He becomes a law giver for 
mankind. What a thing is a sense of justice.' " 

Friday, October 18. — "I had my baggage in the car to 
start for Le Havre to see about moving the office up here, 
when Dr. Janssen (Ocean Hospital) came bounding up 
the steps and asked me to go to Ostend with him to see 
if we could be of any help. We little knew what we would 
face in roads, although we were told the Germans blew up 
all the bridges and road intersections. We got to Pervyse 
and found a division of the Belgian Army waiting to cross 
the Yser. We walked to the famous Schoorbakke and got 
there at 3 P. M. to see the last plank placed on the new 
bridge and to see the first vehicle over. It was too late to 
make Ostend and get Dr. Janssen to the hospital that night, 
so we came back. German trenches were still warm. It 
was mighty interesting to see how they left them, but 
everybody was afraid of hidden mines and traps." 

Saturday, October 19. — "Today I went with the Min- 
ister Vandervyvere to Roulers and Iseghem, just liber- 
ated, both in the district he represents in Parliament. It 



SOME GREAT DAYS TOWARD THE END 203 

was a notable experience. We went up by Poelcappelle 
through an indescribable No-Man' s-Land of death and de- 
struction over roads the worst I ever attempted. We 
lunched in the home of M. Carpentier, burgomaster of 
Iseghem, President of the Comite National, and an old 
friend of my companion. It was almost like breaking 
communion bread. Carpentier was a very rich man be- 
fore the war. For four years they have lived under the 
Germans and in a zone of military operations where it 
was almost impossible to get passes to 'Circulate.' For 
the past two days and nights he and his wife have been in 
the cellar suffering the bombardment of both sides. His 
brewery near the house was burned. Today with perfect 
hospitality they set out a luncheon for us. A dish of soup, 
meat we had brought, some nuts gathered in the country 
nearby, one beautiful pear and one apple, and most mar- 
velous of all, a loaf of wonderful white bread. A Belgian 
officer had given the burgomaster one loaf. These people 
who had been living upon the black German war bread 
and who looked upon this white loaf as almost sacred, cut 
it for us. They set forth their choicest gift for the first 
guests of the liberation. And from the depths of the 
cellar came one bottle of Bordeaux wine which had been 
concealed and saved for a great occasion. The burgomas- 
ter could hardly speak he was so affected by the rapid 
turn of events. Tuesday night they went to bed with 
German soldiers still around them. Wednesday morning 
the Belgians were with them. I find conditions in general 
good. There is no great emergency distress — no great 
amount of sickness — no famine — food stocks for some days 
— but we shall have to get food coming up fast from our 
way as the Hoover food can't come now the other way 
through the German lines. There is a great scarcity of 
clothing. The lines are moving forward farther south also. 
Yesterday our camions rushed a lot of food up to Tour- 
coing, Lille and Roubaix from the Adinkerke warehouses. 
Other camions supplied little villages around Roulers. We 



204 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

find 11,000 of 15,000 inhabitants still at Iseghem. Rou- 
lers had only 1,100 civilians out of 25,000. Roulers was 
just enough nearer the old German front lines to make 
it uninhabitable. 

"We had with us today Baron Gilles de Pelichy of one of 
the old rich Flemish families. He has been working for 
the government at Le Havre for three years. His father 
and mother stayed in their beautiful chateau between 
Iseghem and Ingelmunster. We took him home. It was 
a thrilling trip for him and we shared his excitement. 
We passed old familiar landmarks he had not seen for 
years. As we got within half a dozen miles of home, he 
began to see peasants whom he knew and his excitement 
was almost uncontrollable. Horny-handed old fellows 
came running up to the car, dropping their pipes in their 
emotion, to greet "Mijn lierr den Baron." When we 
reached the chateau we found the great park filled with the 
wooden barracks of a German Army headquarters. I 
never saw so many wires going into one building any- 
where. (An American Army headquarters was estab- 
lished here a week or so later.) An old concierge leaned 
out of an upper window overwhelmed with astonishment 
and the Baron called, 'Is father here V and he said, 'Yes,' 
misunderstanding the question. Then joy was uncon- 
trolled but was doomed quickly to bitter disappointment 
when we found that the old father and mother had been 
forced to go to Brussels two weeks before by the German 
authorities. The chateau was not burned but was more 
or less spoiled. The great circular drawing-room was 
split up by concrete partitions into offices. Stove pipe 
holes were cut through walls in every direction. The 
best of the furniture had been carried away. A litter of 
papers and broken glass and office debris was piled in 
heaps showing that the concierge already was struggling 
with the problem of cleaning and restoring. Fully half 
of the noble trees in the park around the chateau were 
killed by shell fire. It was a sad sight but not as bad as 



SOME GREAT DAYS TOWARD THE END 205 

it might have been. The father and mother were alive and 
the place was there. 

"We had with us the schoolmaster of Roulers, van Rol- 
leghen. When the war broke oat, he buried all his little 
fortune, the accumulation of a lifetime of saving, in the 
garden of his house in Roulers. He was on the front seat 
of our car with the driver wondering if he were a poor 
man in his old age or whether he had enough to live on 
comfortably for the rest of his life. He had not slept for 
eight days in his excitement. Money isn't important com- 
pared with life but still I sympathized with his emotion. 
He found his house burned, his garden plowed up with 
shells, and no trace whatever of his money. He was very 
courageous and said: 'I will start over.' But it was a 
tough experience for him." 

Sunday, October 20, Bruges, Flanders. — "The Germans 
left Bruges yesterday. We are here this afternoon in time 
to see the first enthusiasm of the crowds. The Ministers 
Berry er, Vandevyvere, Helleputte, Poullet and I came up 
together. The crowds lined streets as we drove in about 
4 P. M. and crowded about the cars cheering. Thousands 
of flags which had been hidden were hung out. Everybody 
spoke to us. Everybody wanted to do something for us. 
The people were just starved for the outside world. I 
am tonight at the fine old home of the burgomaster, Count 
Visart. For dinner we had soup, roast beef, at 12 or 14 
francs a kilo, potatoes, a hashed meat, a pudding and four 
or five wines. The dinner was a surprise, especially to 
find that the Germans had left any wine. The morale of 
the population is in the main good. Hoover has done 
great work inside Belgium." 

Monday, October 21, Midnight. — "Bruges to Ostencl 
and back to La Panne. Left the Ministers and went on to 
Ostend. Found the road that was open by following car of 
the new town commander. Impressed by size of town. 
Found 20,000 people of the population of 42,000. Not 
much like the gay summer resort I used to know. Prom- 



206 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ised a quick supply of condensed milk for children. Con- 
ditions generally good. British have done their bombing 
at Ostend with discrimination. Made a horrible mess of 
railroad stations and docks but town itself only hurt here 
and there. The King and Queen visited Bruges today 
after I left but I have arranged to be there for their for- 
mal entry next week. Came by the new Belgian Army 
headquarters at Thourout, picking up the Minister Van- 
dervelde and Dr. Depage on the road and looked over the 
Depage hospital, which our money made possible." 

Tuesday, October 22. — "La Panne to Montreuil-sur-mer 
and back. Down half way to Le Havre to meet Major Lee 
and Captain Corn — to get in touch — and then back for din- 
ner with General Melis tonight at Dunkirk. Completed 
arrangements with Lee to get quickly to Bruges and take 
charge of office I am opening there. Will move everything 
from Le Havre as the Belgian Government is coming up 
at once." 

Bruges, Wednesday, October 23. — "La Panne to Bruges 
— General Melis wanted our help with his hospitals at Os- 
tend and Bruges. Got off with Melis after lunch. Made 
quick trip up over new good shore road. Visited all his pro- 
posed hospitals and then the Depage hospital already func- 
tioning in the JNormal School Building. Considerable fight- 
ing between here and Ghent. Good dinner at a little res- 
taurant. Then walked out in the great square by the tower, 
saw the north star, heard the guns and thought it all over." 

Thursday, October 24, La Panne. — "Visited proposed 
hospitals of General Melis at Ostend. Got back to see In- 
genbleck (Secretary to King). Told me that one of the first 
things the King wanted to do in liberated Belgium was to 
show his gratitude to the American Red Cross by decorat- 
ing Henry P. Davison (Chairman of the War Council). 
Wanted me to bring Davison to see the King at Bruges 
tomorrow, the day of the great entry. Got Davison on 
telephone in Paris. He could not start up until Sunday. 
Had all this to change with the King. Thank God the 



SOME GREAT DAYS TOWARD THE END 207 

King is a King. I believe he cares as much for my con- 
venience and my time and that of every other busy man 
as he does for his own." 

On Friday, October 25, the Commissioner wrote from 
La Panne to Major Lee at Le Havre a description of the 
entry of the King and Queen into Bruges: 

"The famous old bell tower of Bruges looked down upon 
a scene today of which men will think and speak a thou- 
sand years from now. Like a King and Queen of the 
Middle Ages, at the head of their troops, King Albert 
and Queen Elizabeth, with the Crown Prince Leopold, 
rode on horseback into Bruges, while 50,000 people in 
mingled French and Flemish shouted: 'Long live the 
King.' 

"Wheeling about the great square in a graceful curve, 
their Majesties took up a position in the center, attended 
by a staff of Belgian, French and British officers, while 
their troops marched past. Most of these soldiers were 
the simple Flemish boys of the country. Every now and 
then an excited cry would come from the sidewalk of 
some one who recognized a son, a brother, or a sweetheart. 

"At the close of the procession the King dismounted 
with the Queen and Prince, and attended by the staff, 
entered the historic old Government House of the Provin- 
cial Government of West Flanders. Here they were re- 
ceived by the Governor, Burgomaster, the Secretary, the 
Aldermen and other officials. Governor Janssens van Bis- 
thoven and the Burgomaster Yisart, in good Flemish, 
welcomed their Majesties to Bruges. Count Yisart said 
that for four years they had thought about the army, the 
hardships which it was enduring in the trenches on the 
Yser and the fortitude which the men showed under suffer- 
ing and danger. 'But,' said he, 'we have also thought of 
your Majesties and especially Her Majesty, the Queen, 
who has chosen to face just as great dangers in a wonder- 
ful work of relief. Long live the King and long live the 
Queen!' In reply the King said that the historic old city 



208 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

of Bruges had nobly performed its duty during the war. 
It had borne with dignity and courage the presence of the 
enemy. He was glad to come to Bruges with the mem- 
bers of the government; and thanked the citizens for 
their warm welcome and for the hospitality of the city. 
"I was impressed with the fact that our decision to 
move to Bruges was a very wise one. For example: I 
saw Brown, the Holland representative of the Commission 
for Relief in Belgium, one of the Secretaries of our Lega- 
tion at The Hague, and Mr. Jean van den Branden, a very 
dear friend who represents Belgium at the Rotterdam 
office of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. They had 
crossed the frontier from Holland this morning. I saw all 
the men with whom I have been doing business at La 
Panne. There will be opportunity still for work at La 
Panne in connection with the base hospitals this side of 
the Yser and in connection with the other work which we 
have been helping as well as at our barracks at Adin- 
kerke, which have assumed very great importance. I must 
have a good man stay here at La Panne for a time at least 
and perhaps become the District Delegate in this section, 
if we have such a title. 

"Captain Graux went along with me and we talked over 
many things about Le Glandier. I found an urgent situa- 
tion up here about certain surgical supplies like ether and 
chloroform, and have wired to Titcomb to meet me at the 
Hotel Vouillemont in Paris tomorrow night. 

"The Minister of War, whom I saw on my way back, 
said he was moving this week. There will be a farewell 
to friends on Wednesday, at Le Havre. Thursday and 
Friday the ministers will be moving to Bruges. They have 
rented the Hotel du Commerce for living quarters. 

"I found the new office just rented, a sorry looking 
sight with the debris of occupation by German private 
soldiers. I made arrangements to have the burgomaster 
send men to clean it up and put it in order and get furni- 
ture which will be loaned to us for the short time we are 



SOME GREAT DAYS TOWARD THE END 209 

apt to be there. I think it is large enough, to give offices 
to the Friends' Ambulance Unit with us. They seem to 
think it would be advisable to be close to us and I feel very 
sure about it." 

On October 28, Henry P. Davison, accompanied by 
Colonel Harvey Gibson, Major Fosburg, Lieutenant Davi- 
son, and others, came to inspect our work, visiting first 
the Belgian Hospital at La Chartreuse, the Red Cross 
Children's Colony at Recques and then proceeding rapidly 
to Bruges. 

Just outside the city in the Chateau of Laaken, His 
Majesty had established himself, and there received Mr. 
Davison, his son, an officer of the American Naval Avia- 
tion, Colonel Gibson, and the Commissioner. He thanked 
Mr. Davison for the work of the American Red Cross and 
decorated him with the highest Belgian order, the Order 
of Leopold, himself pinning on the decoration and mak- 
ing Mr. Davison a Commander of the Order, the highest 
rank. 

In reply to the King, Mr. Davison said, among other 
things, that he accepted it as the head of the Red Cross and 
not with any sense of personal vanity. 

That was his attitude throughout all his great war work. 
He gave himself, his health and strength, and his com- 
manding abilities without any reward as a representative 
of the American people. 

Americans have a prejudice against decorations. It 
showed itself in a constitutional provision forbidding any 
officer of the United States accepting a title, office or gift 
of any kind from a King or Prince without the consent of 
Congress. An amendment was pending for years, lacking 
only one vote to pass, forbidding any citizen even to ac- 
cept such recognition. 

But Americans now begin to see that it is as foolish to 
refuse decorations as it is to seek them. Unsought they 
carry a message of good will and gratitude. 

The last point which Mr. Davison visited was La Panne 



210 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

where we stood on the beach and looked at the line of build- 
ings along the waterfront, the villa of the King at one end 
and the Ocean Hospital at the other end. 

Directly in front of us were the Bains Militaires or 
Military Baths. 

I told Mr. Davison how a shell came in one day, and 
gave us many casualties there among refugees washing 
and mending clothing, of whom some thirty died, and of a 
frail little hunchback dressmaker who had both legs cut 
off near the hips but who, when her old mother came cry- 
ing to the hospital, said, "Don't cry, mother, I can sit in 
a chair and sew, and I will take care of you." 

Mr. Davison pulled a generous banknote from his pocket 
and said, "This is not official, but I personally will count 
it an honor to help that little dressmaker." 

The great sense of human brotherhood which was felt so 
deeply amid these horrors of war, binding all classes to- 
gether, may yet rule in days of peace. 

Red Cross work means at least one step that way. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

The King Comes Home 

ON the morning of November 11, 1918, at 5 o'clock, 
the armistice was signed, to go into effect at eleven 
A. M. I heard about it at 7 A. M. from the Minis- 
ter Vendervelde, in Bruges, with whom I had an engage- 
ment to go to Rouiers to inspect the condition of the lib- 
erated people. "Let us go to Ghent instead," I said, "Chez 
les Bodies?" He replied, "AH right, we will try it." In 
his beautiful Rolls Royce car we were soon under way, 
stopping to call out the first news of the armistice to the 
little villages we passed. At Lederghem twelve men and 
a dog made a circle and danced about us rejoicing, the dog 
on his hind legs barking loudly, but it was a joyful bark. 
We passed the Belgian outposts at the river and then 
had to clear branches and wires from our path. The 
bridges were down into Ghent, and we circled the city to 
the left, soon meeting peasants coining out who said that 
the bridge over which the Germans marched out eastward 
at seven A. M. was intact. We got around to this bridge 
and soon were in Ghent. We were the first civilians and 
the first automobile to enter, although Belgian soldiers had 
begun to filter in an hour before. The streets were crowded 
and some were impassable, while people shouted, cheered, 
laughed, wept and fought to get to the car and seize our 
hands. A squad of gendarmes soon cleared a way and 
escorted us to the Governor's residence on the square. 
Here we were literally lifted up the outside steps and 
swept into the great entrance hall. The old Governor met 
us half way up the grand staircase, embraced us, and wept 
with joy. 

211 



212 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Soon we were taken to the top of the outer stairs over- 
looking the balcony, where thousands awaited us. Van- 
dervelde spoke in French, a Dutch Senator who came in 
with us, in Flemish and I, in mingled English and French. 
It was an hour when a universal language replaced our 
different tongues. Rich and poor, noble and beggar, sol- 
diers and civilians, listened and wept and cheered, know- 
ing that we all said in one way or another: "The great 
hour has come. God be praised. The heroic old city 
of Ghent is liberated. Your fortitude, your long endur- 
ance, your fidelity have had their reward. The world will 
never forget what you have endured and how you have 
endured it. 'Long live Belgium.' 'Long live the King.' 
'Long live the Allies.' 'Long live Ghent.' And then with 
a thunder sound from the crowds, 'Long live America.' " 

I spoke to the crowd at eleven, the hour the war ended, 
and as I was speaking the Germans across the water fired 
one farewell volley into the town, killing a single civilian, 
a lame old shoemaker. 

To deal promptly with the problem of revictualing we 
had an investigation made at once of the condition of the 
canals toward Holland, from whence the Hoover food had 
to come, as everything was blocked toward Bruges. We 
found that very little work was necessary to clear the main 
route south from Sas van Ghent. The burgomasetr of 
Ghent asked us for malted milk and condensed milk for 
children, and I got a shipment in to him by truck the next 
day. I called on Professor George Hulin de Loo of the 
University of Ghent, whom we had visited before the war, 
and his astonishment left him utterly speechless. With 
him I paid my respects to the Bishop just across the street. 

That night we made our way back to Bruges and then 
learned that those of us in the military establishment were 
forbidden under the terms of the armistice from approach- 
ing within a fixed number of kilometers of the retreating 
Germans. I went to Brussels while the Germans were still 
there, once by accident, but the second time not quite as 



THE KING COMES HOME 213 

accidentally, but after conference with responsible offi- 
cials. 

On Wednesday, November 13, the Minister Yander- 
velde told me in Ostend that he was going to Brussels to 
help steer things, that a revolution had broken out among 
the German soldiers — they were stripping insignia and dec- 
orations from their officers, and that he felt he was needed. 

On Friday, November 15, in Ghent, I met Topping, 
former Secretary to the American Legation at Brussels, 

now with the Associated Press, and Colonel 

of the American Army, who asked me to drive them as 
near Brussels as I could, to see if the Germans were out, 
but not to go into the German lines, as it meant court-mar- 
tial for the Colonel. We started, went very fast, and 
before we knew it went by the German outposts at 40 miles 
an hour. The sentinels seemed uncertain, moved out into 
the road, lifted their guns, and stepped back. All we 
could do was to go on in, turn around in a quiet place, 
drop Topping, who wanted to stay, and get the Colonel out. 
We passed marching Germans, German lorries, German 
troops off duty, and Germans packing up, but were unmo- 
lested. We went out at the same high speed. 

We had heard the explosions of dumps being blown up, 
and I heard rumors of wounded civilians. Early the next 
morning I started back from Bruges to go in to Brussels 
if possible and stay. It was the experience of the day 
before all over again. The sentinels were cowed and un- 
certain. I drove up through the main streets, but the 
attention I attracted appeared dangerous. A crowd as- 
sembled as we stopped to ask directions, shouting and 
cheering, and this might easily have started rioting with 
drunken soldiers out of control. We drove hastily to the 
residence of Paul de Mot, son of the former burgomaster, 
and father of Madame Janssen, wife of Doctor Janssen, 
our friend at La Panne. The servants quickly obeyed my 
Flemish chauffeur, the doors swung open and we were off 
the street and in the courtyard. 



214 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

I had with me M. Gregoire, a civilian, and a young Bel- 
gian aviator, so keen to find his people that he was willing 
to take any chances. He waited until dark, and then went 
home by back streets. This was unnecessary, for I walked 
out that night to the home of M. Hanssens, the lawyer, 
where I was to dine, and I passed many German soldiers 
who stared at me curiously, but without demonstration, 
except in the case of three fellows merry with wine, who 
made some joking passes with their bayonets. To all, the 
war was over. The end had come. The jig was up. 

Sunday morning, November IT, I saw them go out. 
There may come some more momentous and interesting pa- 
rades in my life but I doubt it. 

I had seen them in 1915, marching in Berlin, in Brus- 
sels, in Cologne, and in Aix-la-Chapelle, in the height of 
their power and glory — with new uniforms, shining equip- 
ment and apparently irresistible esprit. 

They went out of Brussels in old uniforms, with bat- 
tered equipment, their auto trucks equipped with iron tires 
instead of rubber, and officers accompanying them in a 
kind of command, but only by permission of the workmen 
and soldiers' representatives who had become the real 
German power. 

The night before I could have bought machine guns 
from them for ten francs and all other kinds of equipment 
in proportion. Some thrifty Belgians made huge profits 
in the days following from souvenirs bought in these last 
hours of German occupation. 

At 11 o'clock Sunday morning the liberation was pro- 
claimed from the City Hall Tower by trumpeters, while a 
dense crowd cheered. "We are half mad today," said my 
brave little gray-haired hostess. "Don't mind us." 

At 2 o'clock Burgomaster Max, just back from a Ger- 
man prison, was received at the Hotel de Ville, Faultlessly 
dressed, suave, smiling, polished, undisturbed, he was the 
same Max as when he went out to meet the invading 
Germany Army on the outskirts of Brussels in August 



& 



THE KING COMES HOME 215 

1914; no different than when he politely refused to take 
the German General's hand, and no different than when 
he nailed up on the bill boards of Brussels his denial of 
German lies for all the population to read, and faced the 
consequences. 

It was the day of most intense emotion in Brussels, as it 
was the first day of freedom, but the day of great spectacle, 
of impressive pageant, and almost equal feeling was at 
hand. 

Said the Americans in Belgium in 1914, "We would 
wait here five years if need be to be here when the King 
comes home." 

Said some of the refugees in Holland, "We would crawl 
on hands and knees to be there when the King enters 
Brussels." 

The relief workers had left in 1917 and were scattered, 
only a few were near enough to be there, and not many of 
the refugees were back. But the government moved up 
en masse from Le Havre excepting a few unhappy officials 
and members of their families who could not get on the 
special trains. The diplomatic corps reappeared from 
Paris, Le Havre and other points near and far. Detach- 
ments of Allied troops came as an escort for the King with 
Pershing, Poch and Prince Albert of England in command. 
People straggled in on foot and packed in lorries and on 
farm carts. By hook or by crook, they got there from 
Paris, from Havre, from Calais, from La Panne, Bruges 
and Ghent. 

John Gummere, left behind at our office in Bruges, flew 
in at the last minute with a Belgian aviator. 

Then amid indescribable scenes, the King and Queen, 
the Princes Leopold and Charlie, and the little Princess 
Marie-Jose formally and officially entered the city, on 
horseback, welcomed by Max, welcomed by Parliament, 
and welcomed by shouting thousands. 

In the same Parliament house where he had taken his 
stand for fidelity to the treaty obligations, the King re- 



216 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

ceived the homage of the government and spoke simply 
and devoutly, his words of thanks. 

Joy was nnconnned. Hope filled the air. The happiest 
of reunions took place. But it seemed as if the King and 
the Queen never forgot for an instant what the country 
had been through, the many graves they had left in Flan- 
ders, and the many people that glad day in Brussels who 
could not have their boys back. 

Very soon the King was hard at work, bearing the almost 
insupportable burdens of peace, and the little Queen had 
gone back to her wounded soldiers at La Panne. 



CHAPTEE XXVIII 

With. Those Who Stayed Under the Germans 

THE Belgians who remained in the country had it hard 
enough but not in the way most Americans imagine. 
The majority of them lived in their own homes and fol- 
lowed their own pursuits. Lawyers kept their offices, doc- 
tors saw their patients, priests went about their parishes. 
Laboring men by the hundreds of thousands were thrown 
out of work when the mills closed, but some mills essen- 
tial to the economic life of the country did not close. 
Farmers tilled the soil and got abnormally high prices. 
And a great business of food runners was developed like 
whiskey running in the United States. These smugglers 
brought in things from Holland and made huge profits in 
which sometimes German sentinels shared. , 

People walked the streets, sat in the cafes, rode on street 
cars, and visited their friends much as usual, and if they 
were not in the zone of active operations they could get 
passes to go to other towns. Their own officials did busi- 
ness in the city hall or town hall, their own teachers taught 
school, their own policemen kept order, and directed traffic. 
But this does not mean that they were free. It means 
that they were not "suffering atrocities" all the time as 
some people seem to imagine. 

The German military authorities were the real power. 
Not even the German Civil Government in Belgium 
amounted to much in comparison with the military au- 
thorities. All manner of petty irksome restrictions were 
imposed. Numbers of people who could easily have ob- 
tained passes to the next town would never bow the head 
enough to ask for them, and so they stayed in their own 

217 



218 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

communities. German sentinels guarded all important 
points. Some streets were entirely closed. Many build- 
ings were taken over. German functionaries, German 
spies, German camp followers swarmed everywhere. How- 
ever much the Belgian civil officials might go through the 
motions of government, they had no real power. And 
railway stations as perhaps no other single buildings em- 
phasized the change. They were closed to the general pub- 
lic — guarded by soldiers, used almost exclusively by the 
military authorities and when troop trains were not going 
west or trains of wounded coming east, they were great, 
empty, hollow-sounding structures in the cities and forlorn 
little places in the country where suspicion and fear and 
restraint seemed raised to their highest point. 

With intercourse outside the country stopped, with their 
own industries paralyzed and their agriculture unable to 
feed them, the big question in Occupied Belgium was 
food and clothing. The Commission for Relief in Bel- 
gium under the leadership of Herbert Hoover kept these 
people alive. This Commissioner handled the stupendous 
questions of finance, purchase, transport and govern- 
mental permissions. The Belgian National Committee 
under Emile Francqui, organized in every commune of 
the country, did the great work of distribution. This un- 
official committee had real power. As one Belgian put it, 
"Francqui was King." 

The American Red Cross, from its position on the other 
side of the fighting lines, sent small sums into Occupied 
Belgium during the latter part of the war to help the 
Commission for Relief in Belgium do special things. To 
help needy Belgian journalists, an association was organ- 
ized called Association de la Presse Beige. Some 320 men 
representing 68 daily papers, refused to have anything 
to do with journals appearing under German censorship. 
A number of these men with their families suffered se- 
verely. The King contributed from his own purse 10,000 
francs a month to a relief fund for them, the Minister of 



THOSE WHO STAYED UNDER GERMANS 219 

the Interior 5,000 francs and the American Red Cross 
10,000 francs a month. In July, 1918, the Germans for- 
bade this aid, but the contributions were then made 
through Edmond Patris, the moving spirit of the organi- 
zation at Le Havre, and he sent the money in through a 
secret channel. 

In 1916 Mr. Hoover endorsed the establishment in Lon- 
don of a special fund for the "Doctors and Pharmacists of 
Belgium" who were greatly needed in the country but 
who would not accept help through regular channels. For 
the last four months of 1918 we gave some 5,000 francs a 
month to this fund. 

To help others of the "unfortunate and proud," the 
Baroness de Woot had organized a committee in Brussels 
called Secours aux Infortunes which rendered valuable 
service. 

Likewise the Assistance Discrete in which Madame 
Haps was an active force, took hold in even a larger way 
of this same problem. 

Madame Baetens, wife of one of the officers of the Com- 
mission for Relief in Belgium, held all these organiza- 
tions together and administered through them and through 
other channels a special fund of the Commission for Re- 
lief in Belgium for special needy cases. We helped all 
these organizations during the latter part of the war, send- 
ing in through the Commission for Relief in Belgium 
100,000 francs a month for Madame Baetens' work, 10,- 
000 francs a month for the Assistance Discrete, and 2,500 
francs monthly for the work of the Baroness de Woot. 
After the armistice we had a chance to study this work 
at first hand, and found it directed with great public 
spirit and intelligence. Through the difficult weeks fol- 
lowing the armistice, and especially in the hard winter of 
1918-19, we made it possible for these committees to con- 
tinue, giving our help regularly until the office closed in 
the spring of 1919. 

A useful thing was done by Madame Haps in taking 



220 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

over Le Repos de Ste. Elisabeth at La Panne where aged 
refugees lived so long and turning it into a sanitarium for 
working girls of liberated Belgium of the type the Assist- 
ance Discrete had, been helping throughout the war. To 
the installation and maintenance of this project the Ameri- 
can Red Cross gave 100,000 francs. 

In Brussels and the other great cities of the occupied 
region we found strong, active committees at work in 
every conceivable kind of an undertaking to help human 
misery. We could not help a quarter or a tenth of the 
groups needing and asking our help, but in the five months 
we stayed after the occupation, we used the balance of our 
appropriations in the best ways open. 

Countess Jean d' Outremont had struggled throughout 
the war to keep going an institution called Le Calvaire, 
for cancer patients. It was a Calvary up which these 
poor people walked, but the Countess and her colleagues 
were like Ste. Veronica wiping away a little of the bloody 
sweat. We gave them 5,000 francs. 

In the first rush of the Germans in 1914, Termonde 
had been burned and three of the inhabitants had lost their 
lives. While we could not "rebuild Belgium," we found 
such serious suffering and congestion at Termonde in the 
winter of 1918-19 that we gave 50,000 francs through the 
Senator Emile Tibbaut for the purchase of wood and the 
hiring of labor to construct 50 two-room houses, specifying 
that the work must be done under the Xing Albert Fund. 

The Minister Yandevyvere called our attention to the 
importance of the Civil Hospital at Thielt and we visited 
it promptly and found it much damaged by shell fire and 
by removal of its furniture. We gave 25,000 francs to- 
ward rebuilding the hospital. 

To the Civil Hospital at Bruges we shipped a carload 
of supplies as soon as the city was liberated and the first 
rails laid across the trenches, which was done in an amaz- 
ingly short time. We gave, through M. Coppieters 't 
Wallant, Commissaire d' Arrondissement of Bruges, 5,000 



THOSE WHO STAYED UNDER GERMANS 221 

francs for the hospital and 10,000 francs for refugees in 
Bruges. 

An American lady, married into one of the oldest 
families of the country, was the Vicomtesse de Beughem. 
She concentrated her help upon the lace makers of Flan- 
ders, especially those in danger of breaking down with 
tuberculosis. Her work was called Secours Urgent and one 
of her most active supporters was Mrs. Brand Whitlock. 
Mrs. Yernon Kellog has told in "Bobbins of Flanders" the 
story of this wonderful home industry of lace making. 

The Queen, the Countess de Beughem, Countess Van 
den Steen, Madame Hangouvart, Countess Louise d'Ursel 
and others worked hard throughout the war to keep these 
bobbins busy, first of all as a livelihood for thousands em- 
ployed. But they also sought to abolish the low rates 
of pay and the swarm of middlemen preying upon the in- 
dustry and to raise the level of the work in artistic ways, 
substituting beautiful for ugly designs. We had taken 
this matter up through M. Ingenbleck, Secretary to the 
Queen, and had given 5,000 francs to the Comite Dentellier 
Franco-Belge-Americain to promote the industry among 
the Flemish refugees in northern France. At Brussels 
we gave 20,000 francs to this work as directed by the 
Countess de Beughem. 

The Countess Louise d'Ursel, who had been at the 
Belgian front the first part of the war, went back to 
Brussels in 1916, and devoted herself to saving babies. 
We helped the Asile pour les tous Petit in Brussels, giv- 
ing 50,000 francs. Seeing the work of social reconstruc- 
tion stretching ahead in Belgium for years, and the need 
of modern methods, the Countess came to the United 
States soon after the armistice and took a course in Co- 
lumbia University and at the New York School of Phi- 
lanthropy. 

The brave Father Libert ran his institution for the 
blind and for deaf mutes all through the war at Woluwe 
St. Lambert, a suburb of Brussels. The Red Cross helped 



222 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Father Libert through the trying days of reconstruction 
with an appropriation of 60,000 francs. No educational 
work in Belgium seemed more full of promise than the 
work of these consecrated and progressive priests in sav- 
ing and training what would otherwise he waste human 
products. Several children blinded by the war were sent 
to Woluwe and trained to useful trades. 

In the summer of 1918, Baden-Powell of England wrote, 
urging a drive in the United States for the Boy Scouts of 
Serbia, Belgium and France. It was no time to put on 
more drives and the Red Cross had agreed to deal with 
urgent war misery everywhere. The inability of the Bel- 
gian Boy Scouts to get uniforms after the armistice, the 
prohibitive cost of cloth in Belgium, the great importance 
of the organization and the keenness and patriotism of 
the boys made us appropriate 100,000 francs through 
Pierre Graux for this purpose. At the same time, we at- 
tempted a union of the three branches of the Boy Scouts in 
the country, two Catholic and one Liberal ; this since has 
been accomplished in part through the union of the Liberal 
and one of the Catholic groups. 

For four years German Boy Scouts, imported into the 
country as messengers, tramped the lovely woods about 
Brussels, while the Belgian boys were forbidden to go 
out. Now, as the Belgians say, it is une autre chose. 

The universal desire to give personal service throughout 
the war, as well as money, showed itself in a group of 
young ladies of Belgium, led by the Countess Jacqueline de 
Liederkerke, calling themselves Les Petites Roses de la 
Heine, who did a work of house to house visitation in the 
poorer quarters of the cities under supervision of the Na- 
tional Committee, giving clothing and supplementing the 
diet for the sick and badly nourished. Their budget grew 
from 5,000 francs per year in 1914 to 60,000 in 1918. 
Their accounts and records were admirably kept. We 
gave them 5,000 francs to go on through the difficult win- 
ter days after the armistice. There were many such con- 



THOSE WHO STAYED UNDER GERMANS 223 

secrated groups, the largest and best known being Les 
Petites Abeilles, or "Little Bees." 

Work on a much larger scale was done by Le Foyer des 
Orphelins which had colonies of children in Brussels, 
Liege, Mons and other cities. Emanuel Janssen, an officer 
of the National Committee, Captain Graux, Secretary of 
the Queen, and Emile Vandervelde, Minister of Justice, 
joined in urging prompt help for this work. We were able 
to appropriate 400,000 francs. 

Mademoiselle Jeanne de Ponthiere, niece of the Minis- 
ter Berryer, was at the head of a committee working for 
children in the industrial districts of Liege. The Red 
Cross helped this committee with 10,000 francs. 

Another group working among children of laboring men 
in Brussels was called Les Enfants du Pewple, largely So- 
cialist, just as Mile, de Ponthiere and her associates were 
all Catholic, but curiously enough, Liberals not friendly to 
either Catholics or Socialists, urged both of these works 
upon us. We gave this work 5,000 francs. 

And so it went: Les Enfants Martyrs, established 26 
years before for children starved or beaten at home, had its 
property taken over by the Germans for a hospital, its 
furniture carried away, its subscriptions stopped. We 
helped reestablish the 350 boys and girls in their home at 
a cost of 40,000 francs, working in this matter largely 
through M. Eugene Le Docte. 

The Judge of the Juvenile Court, Monsieur Wets, came 
to us for his Le Bergail, dealing with children whose par- 
ents were at work, some of them perforce in Germany, 
and supplying to the children care, recreation and instruc- 
tion from 4 P. M. when school closed to 7 P. M. when 
the mother got home. We gave Le Bergail 5,000 francs. 

To the Creche Beige of the Countess Yan de Steen in 
Brussels, we gave 10,000 francs for a new laundry, to the 
Creche Nord-Est, in charge of Madame Gabrielle Vander- 
velde, wife of Dr. Vandervelde, 5,000 francs for mainte- 
nance, to Soeur Marie Josephine at Fumes, 5,000 francs to 



224 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

rebuild and refurnish her schoolroom in which many 
of the children of the Red Cross Colony of Recques are 
now being taught. Through Dr. Holemans, Inspector 
General of the Service de Sante Beige, we gave 2,000 
francs for the Ligue Provinciale pour la Protection de la 
Premiere Enfance in Ghent. But this was only a be- 
ginning in that great city. M. Anseele, a member of the 
new Belgian Cabinet, formed at the Chateau of Laaken 
just after the armistice, sought our help for the children 
of Ghent, many hundreds of whom he was taking out of 
the city to recuperate at the seashore. We gave his com- 
mittee 200,000 francs. 

To the Children's Fund of the Croix Rouge de Bel- 
gique we gave 100,000 francs for work especially among 
debilitated children of Brussels. 

If it be true, as we were told, that the child question 
in Belgium and France is full of dynamite, then we did 
not step on that dynamite. The political parties of Bel- 
gium are more alive to the importance of saving and direct- 
ing the children than in most countries. Each party makes 
every effort to get the children under its own direction 
and to make Catholics or Liberals or Socialists of them. 
But it was evident that the best men and women in all 
parties wanted the children saved, no matter who saved 
them or who profited by their being saved. 

All three parties wanted to make strong, efficient men 
and women out of these children for the sake of Belgium. 

If we had been afraid of the dynamite in the children's 
question we would never have got anywhere. If we had 
tried to apologize to one party for what we had done 
through the agency of another party, we would have ut- 
terly failed. If we had ignored any important group, 
we would have lost control of the situation. 

We tried to be absolutely nonpartisan, independent and 
friendly with everybody. So far as we had the money and 
the supplies, so far as need could be demonstrated and so 



THOSE WHO STAYED UNDER GERMANS 225 

far as the agency could prove itself intelligent and co- 
operative, we helped and did it without fear or favor. 

In so doing, it is only fair to say that the American Red 
Cross in Belgium won the confidence, the gratitude and 
even the affection of all groups. 

There was equally important follow-up work for sol- 
diers after the armistice. Her Majesty, the Queen, took 
the lead in this and we continued our appropriations for 
the Queen's Purse into the new year. 

Madame John de Mot, a brave American lady, was mar- 
ried to one of the most gallant of Belgian gentlemen, a 
private soldier, killed just at the very end of the war. 
Madame De Mot, who had been nursing at the front, threw 
in her lot with her husband's country, reopened her home 
in Brussels and organized a committee to visit sick and 
wounded soldiers in the hospitals, to which work we 
appropriated 10,000 francs. 

What we did in Germany for the men of the Army of 
Occupation has already been described in the chapter 
"For Those Who Held the Line." 

The Nursing Home in Brussels to which Edith Cavell 
had been attached, had been named after her. It had not 
only trained nurses but given help to wounded soldiers 
within the country. We appropriated 10,000 francs to 
help this institution. 

Madame Hymans' Famille de Vlnfirmiere, which we 
had helped at Dieppe in France, wanted to move back to 
Brussels and carry on work for nurses of the war, many 
of whom were still at the task of caring for the wounded. 
We appropriated 85,000 francs for the new installation. 

Madame Hymans, wife of the Minister, Madame Dar- 
denne, who had served with us at Le Havre, and Mademoi- 
selle Carter, head of one of the public schools of Brussels 
during the occupation, took up the condition of public 
school teachers. On small pay and in a period of fan- 
tastic prices, these public servants had worked during the 
war, never getting adequate nourishment. Many of them 



226 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

took their noon day meal at the public soup kitchens. 
They cooperated loyally with the Hoover-Francqui feeding, 
rendering valuable assistance. After the war many were 
broken down, enfeebled and predisposed to tuberculosis. 

With our appropriation of 23,000 francs, these ladies 
organized a rest home for school teachers, which caught 
the attention of the public, has been well supported, and 
has done important work. 

Belgium had some 10,000 political prisoners besides the 
40,000 soldier prisoners. 

On April 7, 1919, the Secretary General in charge of 
Prisoners of War, reported that all of these had returned 
except ten not transportable. 

At the same time, the 2,000 or 3,000 deported for labor, 
were liberated. It was as if a great magician had waved 
a wand so suddenly did they appear. With them came 
Russians, French, British, Italians, Americans and others, 
streaming into Belgium, moving officially in box cars and 
unofficially on foot. We sent supplies to all the military 
canteens between Brussels and the Rhine for these wan- 
dering, wondering thousands, some of whom moved as in 
a dream, "saw men as trees walking," and traveled on the 
homing instinct which guides the dog and pigeon and 
which man has, at least in embryo. 

M. Masson, a prominent lawyer of Brussels, started 
home from Germany when the doors of his prison opened. 
A train took him to Holland, but he could not cross the 
frontier. Back around by Aix-la-Chapelle he made his 
way again, and at last on foot, came to the Belgian border. 
He asked for Belgian soldiers, found his way to a com- 
pany nearby, humbly asked permission of the Lieutenant 
to telephone to Brussels to tell his friends and ask help, 
when an officer passed who recognized him and saluted 
him as M. le Ministre. "Minister," said Masson, "what 
Minister?" "Why, don't you know," said his friend, "I 
saw it in the morning paper. The King has made you 
Minister of War in the new Cabinet." There was one 



THOSE WHO STAYED UNDER GERMANS 227 

refugee at least to whom soldiers presented arms, whom 
officers attended in person, and for whom the fastest mili- 
tary car was supplied. 

Mr. Alfred Goldschmidt, of Brussels, for two years a 
prisoner in Germany, on liberation, became Treasurer of 
the Federation Nationale des Prisonniers Politique s de la 
Guerre. He wrote us as follows : 

"I call your attention to the unhappy condition of 
Belgian political prisoners returning to their country. 
Some are entirely broken in health, others have lost their 
business and have nothing with which to begin life again. 
They have suffered for their loyalty to the cause of the 
Allies. They have been confined for spreading informa- 
tion or assisting boys to escape to join the army, or for 
helping in other ways to maintain the spirit of Belgian 
independence against German aggressors." 

We appropriated 60,000 francs to help these unfor- 
tunates. 

The Belgians worked hard, and worked in unison to 
relieve the misery and repair the ravages of the war. 

The American Red Cross was with them helping in the 
first trying months of liberation. To such good purpose 
did all pull together that when we left a shrewd observer 
said that which subsequent events have proved true: 
"The Belgians are coming strong and coming fast, and 
will be on their feet first of all." 



CHAPTER XXIX 

The Reopening of the Universities 

THE universities stayed perforce under the Germans. 
Faculties were divided. Some professors got away 
and some had to stay. But the students were gone. Down 
on the Yser were these boys of Louvain, Brussels, Liege 
and Ghent. With them were some of the professors, nearly 
all in khaki, too. 

Louvain is Catholic, Brussels is "free" or Liberal, 
while Liege and Ghent are state universities, but for over 
30 years that has meant Catholic also. American sympa- 
thy went out especially to the Belgian universities. Pro- 
fessors here united to invite over to the United States Bel- 
gian professors among the refugees and to find them work. 

The burning of the library of Louvain, the loss of its 
priceless treasures, and the fact that the university is 
under Cardinal Mercier, aroused American sympathy for 
this institution, and citizens of the United States contrib- 
uted some 2,000,000 francs toward the fund for re- 
building. 

The University of Brussels has aroused interest also 
in the United States because of its freedom from political 
or sectarian control, and also because the brave burgomas- 
ter of Brussels, M. Max, is at the head of the Board of 
Control. 

In January, 1919, this university opened its doors 
after being closed four and one half years. With accom- 
modations for 1,200, it enrolled 2,500. Among the stu- 
dents were many in khaki whom the government did not 
dare demobilize as yet, but whom it stationed at Brussels 
so that they might resume their studies. At the opening 

228 



THE REOPENING OF THE UNIVERSITIES 229 

exercises before a crowded hall, Burgomaster Max, recently 
back from prison, presided and tlie speaker was the vener- 
able and beloved Kector, Dr. Paul Heger, who bad 
watched over the university during the occupation and who 
now welcomed the faculty and students back. "The in- 
terest and enthusiasm of students," said Dr. Heger, "is 
the most touching of post-war phenomena. It seems as if 
these young men were trying to make up for time lost 
in war." 

On the wall, back of the speakers' platform, had been 
placed the names of the students of the university who 
had enlisted in the Belgian Army and who had died for 
their country. Some of these boys, caught in the country 
by the German occupation, had made their way out with 
enormous danger, running the frontier, passing over or 
under the electric barriers which to touch was death, tak- 
ing the long journey to Holland, England, France and so 
up to the army on the Yser. The names of the dead were 
read out by departments, those in law, in medicine, in 
science, in engineering, amid scenes of indescribable solem- 
nity and pathos. "These were the boys," said an old man, 
"who will never fight disease, plead causes, dam rivers or 
drain swamps, but they made it possible for these living 
boys to do all those things." 

The message of the dead to the living had been in- 
scribed on the wall above their names : "Brothers so live 
that we shall not have died in vain." 

We made an appropriation of 100,000 francs to the 
University of Brussels to purchase material and equip- 
ment for laboratories and to help it get started. 

During the summer of 1921, the Rockefeller Founda- 
tion made a contract with the University of Brussels by 
which it appropriates 40,000,000 francs, with a possibil- 
ity of even more for medical education in Belgium through 
this institution. That the university itself wants the 
high standards the Foundation requires and that the 
Foundation has the vision, the power and the disposition 



230 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

to render such service throughout the world, is one of the 
most cheering facts in modern life. 

We appropriated also 20,000 francs for the medical 
clinics and 20,000 francs for the surgical clinics of the 
University of Liege. The Germans had cut the water 
and gas pipes, had removed electric fixtures and belts from 
machinery and had damaged some instruments and carried 
others away. As Liege is a State institution, repair and 
support were tasks of the State, which we did not desire 
to undertake. We did simply a few urgent things which 
enabled the professors to start work while governmental 
machinery was getting ready to function. 

Dr. Louis Delrez, head of the surgical clinic of Liege, 
had been with us on the Yser. We had seen his work. Lie 
had taken a patella from a dead soldier and grafted it on 
to a living soldier. He had taken tendons also from the 
dead and given them to men whose tendons had been de- 
stroyed by shells. In one case a piece of tendon four 
inches long inserted in the hand of a pianist had restored 
normal control of the fingers at the instrument and given 
the man back his livelihood. His patients walked on arti- 
ficial legs seven or eight days after amputation. Belgium 
needed this teacher back at work and the help of the 
American Red Cross made it possible. 

Professor Beco, head of the medical clinic, had been 
kept in the country. He was greatly needed and did valu- 
able work. 

Professor Jacques Roskam, his assistant, had fought 
contagion and other civilian illness in Free Belgium and 
was given the American Red Cross medal for distinguished 
service. And we likewise knew of Liege and its needs 
through Dr. Pierre ISTolf, one of the most famous of all the 
medical men of Belgium, to whom the Red Cross medal 
was also given, with the citation printed in an Appendix 
of this book. 

The teachers and students of Belgium have had stern 
discipline in the school of the soldier. They have been 



THE REOPENING OF THE UNIVERSITIES 231 

shaken out of routine and put into contact with the huge 
elemental forces which broke up the old world. They are 
now at the task of rebuilding the new. Those of us who 
saw them "tried in the furnace," are full of hope for the 
future. 



CHAPTEE XXX 

Cardinal Mercier 

THROUGH the long years that the King was on the 
Yser, Cardinal Mercier was in his Episcopal palace 
at Malines, the Archbishop of Malines, and the spiritual 
leader of all Belgium. He was the incarnation of the 
spirit of wise and courageous resistance to German domi- 
nation. 

A clergyman would not have been expected to know how 
to deal with difficult affairs of state. A great scholar, a 
professor of philosophy, a specialist in the teachings of 
Thomas Aquinas, would especially have been considered 
too far removed from the swirling movements of world 
politics to play a great part. 

And as for doing it in war time, it was unthinkable. 

But it was this scholar, this ascetic, this classroom 
teacher, this churchman of churchmen, who stepped for- 
ward in a great crisis and played his part with a skill, a 
courage, a profound wisdom that baffled the Germans and 
made him one of the great figures of history. 

Cardinal Mercier could perhaps have led the masses into 
futile riot and made Occupied Belgium a shambles. 

Or he could have counseled hopeless submission so that 
the heroic King and his soldiers would have found little 
left when they came back. But he helped hold Occupied 
Belgium to a pathway of calmness, of dignity, of submis- 
sion to the German ruler while at the same time they never 
acknowledged or accepted him. 

"Let us not mistake bravado for bravery," he said, "nor 
tumult for courage. Let us conduct ourselves with all 
needful forbearance. 

232 



CARDINAL MERCIER 233 

"You owe to the enemy neither esteem nor affection, nor 
confidence; we owe external obedience as long as it is not 
against our conscience." 

But over and over he predicted victory for the Belgians 
and exhorted the people to stand firm. 

Once even (in 1916) he dared say in the old church of 
Ste. Gudule in Brussels, on the 86th Anniversary of Bel- 
gian independance. "Fourteen years ;from today our 
restored cathedrals and our rebuilt churches will be thrown 
widely open; the crowds will surge in; our King Albert, 
standing upon his throne, will bow his unconquered head 
before the King of Kings; the Queen and royal princes 
will surround him. . . . Throughout the whole country 
under the vaulted arches of our churches, Belgians hand 
in hand will renew their vows to their God, their sover- 
eign and their liberty. Today the hymn of joy dies on 
our lips. The hour of deliverance approaches but it has 
not yet struck. Let us be patient. Let us not suffer our 
courage to waver." 

Though the Germans went up against him time after 
time, set guards about his palace, refused him permission 
to use his car, kept him from moving freely throughout 
his diocese, they never really dared to make him a pris- 
oner. A German officer would come to him raging over an 
utterance and demand an explanation, and the Cardinal 
would leave him while he said mass in the church. The 
officer would demand an immediate reply and the Cardinal 
would leave him waiting all day while he composed an 
answer for the Governor General, which that official did 
not know how to handle. There were too many Catholics 
in Germany for German Governors and Generals to go 
too far. 

And so we found him at Malines when Belgium was 
liberated. There was no disillusionment in meeting him 
and studying his work. He had a great multitude of poor 
in his own parish to whom he was ministering. Almost 
immediately he had the additional burden of returning 



234 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

refugees. With him and with a most able and charming 
Dominican priest, Pere R.utten, we went into the needs of 
his work and made an appropriation for it of 100,000 
francs. 

We made our appropriation to him as a great relief 
worker whose knowledge of the field and whose ability to 
administer was unsurpassed. He was not always busy 
opposing Germans. He was caring for his flock and 
his flock included nearly everybody in that region. 

We felt confidence in his sagacity and his methods, as 
well as in his kindness of heart. 

The more one meets and studies and investigates Cardi- 
nal Mercier, the more one respects him. 

What the Cardinal preached he practiced. He is no 
jolly red-faced monk eating capons and drinking rich 
wine, while his people have black bread. He is abstem- 
ious at the table — simple in all his ways — both cordial and 
dignified, and one recognizes him in the first moment of 
an interview as a man of God. 

"And for you, ladies," he said, during the war to a 
great congregation, "were you to make a show of abun- 
dance at a time when your sisters have only clogs and 
threadbare garments, be sure that you would offend God, 
your country, and the dignity of the poor. Make the sub- 
stance of your sacrifice out of your personal sufferings 
and your national sufferings, as well as out of all the 
actions of your lives." 

That which gave power to Albert and Elizabeth gave 
power to Cardinal Mercier — he shared the sufferings and 
dangers of his people. Than that there is no greater se- 
cret of leadership. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

The Great Ambassador 

TO the Belgians who lived under the German rule, 
Brand Whitlock was a rock of defense. He symbol- 
ized America, in the background, watching, helping, ready 
to leap at the Germans if they went too far. When others 
could not communicate, his couriers went out into that 
great unknown world from which they were cut off. His 
car went through the country. His flag was hung out in 
Brussels. He 'himself could be seen every day going 
about his work. 

In moments of unusual stress or fear, the Belgians 
knew that Whitlock was working for them, protesting to 
the German authorities, cabling his own government, and 
conferring with his close friend, the gallant and able Span- 
ish Minister, Villalobar. 

His own book, "Belgium Under the German Occupa- 
tion," tells the tragic, romantic story so that we almost live 
there ourselves under the Germans, mock with street gam- 
ins, slink about with spys, tremble over passports, work 
with Hoover and his men, plan secretly to circumvent the 
Germans, laugh over their rage and weep for the victims 
of their fury. 

There will be the Whitlock of legend for long years in 
Belgium. 

He didn't do half the things which the common people 
whispered that he had done, but what they whispered was 
true nevertheless. It illustrated what he did do and what 
he was to them. 

When the United States went into the war, Mr. Whit- 
lock stayed in Brussels for two months after the rupture of 

235 



236 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

diplomatic relations with Germany. He refused to go 
until he could take with him the Consuls and members of 
the Commission for Relief in Belgium. When he gets 
ready to tell the story of those months and the difficulties 
he had, it will he worth reading. But when he went, his 
car was the last in the special train, the Americans were 
in the cars ahead, and the arrangements had been com- 
pleted with Dutch and Spanish neutrals to look after 
the huge task of feeding which had to go on. 

When the long trip through Germany, Switzerland, and 
France was over and they reached Havre with Mrs. Whit- 
lock, he went to La Panne to pay his respects to the King, 

They were received in the little villa on the seashore 
by their Majesties and had luncheon with them. Then Mr. 
Whitlock was closeted for an hour or more with the King. 
Nobody ever knew what was said during that hour. There 
is a seal of confidence upon interviews with royalty. But 
some day that seal ought to be broken for the sake of his- 
tory. The King gave him the Grand Order of the Crown 
of Leopold, the highest distinction that can be awarded. 

During this visit, Mr. Whitlock took Mrs. Whitlock to 
the front, and Mrs. Whitlock was one of the few Ameri- 
can women under fire in the trenches. 

A touching incident occurred at Houthem, the Belgian 
General Headquarters. Mr. Whitlock was presented to 
General Rucquoy, who was then Chief of the General Staff 
and commanding tile Belgian Army. When he heard his 
name, the General burst into tears. His wife and chil- 
dren were inside Belgium under the Germans, and some- 
how or other he had got word out, of what Whitlock had 
done for them and for all the other people, and the whole 
memory was too much for him. 

The life at Le Havre was totally different for the Minis- 
ter. At Brussels, he was Minister to a country without 
a government. At Le Havre, he was Minister to a govern- 
ment without much of its country. In the one place he 



THE GREAT AMBASSADOR 237 

was an Envoy Extraordinary to the people and in the 
other place, to a Cabinet. 

Bnt he had the chance to render service while he waited 
for the glad summons hack to Brussels eighteen or nine- 
teen months away. 

Every now and then he was at the front to see the King 
or with De Broqueville of the cabinet, at his old chateau 
at Steen. 

The house at Le Havre became a meeting place for 
Belgians, Americans and British. General Nicholson, 
Commander of the British Base, General Coulter, Com- 
mander of the American Base, members of the Belgian 
Cabinet and their families all liked to come. There they 
were apt to find Americans passing through who wanted 
to see "Brand Whitlock who really faced the Germans," 
or to meet Bed Cross or Y. M. C. A. workers, or young 
officers attached to our base. 

Various celebrations were organized by the Belgians at 
Le Havre in honor of the United States and in salute of 
our flag, and Whitlock was always there to receive the 
salute. 

One of the things they all like to recall is the banquet 
they gave him at the Hotellerie where the Ministers lived. 
Whitlock not only replied to the tributes in faultless 
French, but toward the end he dropped into the Belgian 
vernacular and even used a little Brussels slang which 
brought thunderous applause. 

When the great day of liberation came, the first thing 
the Brussels authorities did was to send Mr. Whitlock a 
telegram at Le Havre signed by Burgomaster Max. With 
incredible difficulty he got to Brussels for the entry of the 
King and Queen, bringing the British Minister through 
the old ISTo-Man's Land, where his car had failed him. 
Within the next few months, Mr. Whitlock was made a 
burgher of the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Liege and 
Ghent, with imposing ceremonies; a Doctor of Laws of 
the University of Brussels ; a member of the Koyal Acad- 



238 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

emy, and was received in solemn session by the two houses 
of Parliament, to receive the thanks of the Belgian Govern- 
ment. A medallion was struck in his honor, and his bust 
by Rombeaux, greatest of Belgian sculptors, was placed 
in the halls of Parliament. 

x\ll that a grateful people could do they did to show 
undying gratitude. 

The reception by the joint session of Parliament was 
a brilliant scene. Said a Belgium writer, "In the body 
of the chamber were gathered the Ministers of State, the 
Senators and Deputies, and on the platform were the 
President of the Senate, the President of the Chamber, 
and the Minister, with the other protecting Ministers. 
The tribunes were filled with a distinguished gathering, in- 
cluding the members of the diplomatic corps and their 
wives, the members of the Comite National, the directors 
of the Societe Generate and the Banque Nationale, offi- 
cers of the Allied Armies, and many well known repre- 
sentatives from public and private life. The President of 
the Senate made the opening address and he was followed 
by the Prime Minister, who was in turn followed by the 
President of the Chamber. The Minister (Mr. Whit- 
lock) responded in French and his speech was frequently 
interrupted by the enthusiastic demonstration of the whole 
assembly." 

He spoke of Hoover, of Solvay and Francqui, who had 
worked with Hoover, of President Wilson, of the indom- 
itable spirit of the population led by the burgomasters and 
fired by the flame of patriotism, held aloft in the pious 
hands of the Great Cardinal, and of the King who had 
established his kingdom in the heart of every man who 
knows the word honor. He called up the figures of the 
young men who had died for their country, who had tried 
to cross the electric barricade of the frontier, who had 
fallen on the Yser and all the victims of war shot in the 
prisons by the Germans, and then set up the ideal of 
making the world worthy of them. 



THE GREAT AMBASSADOR 239 

What had been a tribute to himself, he turned into a 
solemn and impressive tribute to others. 

It was characteristic of Brand Whitloek to make that 
kind of a speech and through his command of French, his 
gift of real eloquence and the circumstances of his service, 
he could do it as could few other men. 

When, after the armistice, the Commissioner to Bel- 
gium was asked by Washington to make at once his recom- 
mendations of names to receive American Red Cross 
medals, he wrote this of Brand Whitloek: 

"Brand Whitloek, American Minister to Belgium, re- 
ceived the Commission to Belgium at Le Havre, then the 
seat of the Belgian Government. He presented us to the 
President of the Council (Prime Minister), other officials 
and people important for us to know. He placed himself, 
his office and all his influence at our disposal. Refusing to 
let his name be printed officially as a member of the Com- 
mission, he became such in fact. Both at Le Havre and 
upon our return to Brussels, he put all he knew about 
men and events freely at our service. By his unchanging 
confidence he strengthened our morale. By his clear vision 
he helped us to find the path of real service. The Com- 
mission to Belgium recommends to the War Council that 
he be granted the American Red Cross Silver Medal for 
distinguished service in the war." 

This award was promptly made and Mr. Whitloek was 
notified. When, however, a committee on awards at 
Washington took up the whole subject, they decided 
promptly to award no medals to Americans because of 
the fact that in Europe thousands, and in the United 
States millions had rendered consecrated service. Learn- 
ing of this wise decision, Mr. Whitloek wrote at once 
asking that the award to him be withdrawn and that he 
stand with his countrymen undistinguished in this way. 

Said a prominent member of the Belgian Government 
on a visit to Washington in 1921, "Why should the United 
States ever withdraw Brand Whitloek as Ambassador to 



240 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

Belgium as long as lie is willing to stay? He can have 
anything we can give him. He can say practically any- 
thing he chooses. His influence in Belgium is enormous. 
He stayed with us under the Germans and was our rock 
of defense. The people never will forget him." 



CHAPTEE XXXII 

The Americans Come to Flanders 

FOR a year after we went over, there were no American 
combat troops in Flanders. At Le Havre we began 
to see them come in, first slowly and then with a great 
rush. The Paris office had charge of welfare work for 
American soldiers undertaken by the American Red Cross 
and all that we of the Belgian Commission could do was 
to cooperate and supplement. Up at the Flanders front, 
there were a few doctors and nurses coming and going 
at La Panne, serving aud studying at the great Ocean 
Hospital. There was the American Military Mission to 
the Belgian Army, with Captain Wm. Penn Cresson in 
charge and finally young Lieutenant Pendleton as assist- 
ant. Pendleton went out one night with a raiding party of 
Belgians, fought like a young demon, and got scratched 
by a piece of shell on the cheek. The next morning the 
tall figure of the King came down the ward of the hospital 
at Vinckem with the Belgian Croix de Guerre in his hand 
which he pinned on Pendleton's breast himself as a trib- 
ute to his courage and to the fact that he was the first 
American to be wounded on the Belgian front. Later that 
day the Queen also called to see him, bringing him some 
of her roses and showing the deepest interest in his exploit. 
Meanwhile the Red Cross was getting off cables to his 
people that he was all right. 

An American seaplane base was established at Dunkirk 
and a second one a little later on the Calais road a little 
further back. We began to see our flyers doing their best 
with clumsy, old, outgrown French machines, but suffering 
many accidents. A boy burned up in Dunkirk streets 

241 



242 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

as we came driving in one day. The engine failed, and 
he crashed first on a roof and then into the street. An- 
other boy, Lasher, a Union College student, fell out at 
sea, broke his leg, lost his front observer, and nearly 
drowned, being held up by his rear observer until another 
seaplane could take him in. A second plane lay out in the 
channel some 20 miles from Dunkirk until a pigeon re- 
leased with a message, brought help. 

We began to hear other thrilling tales born of sea and 
flight and war. A plane was down and needed help. A 
launch with a crew of seven men went out from the base 
at Dunkirk. By wireless it learned that some one else 
had the plane and started back. It was a perfect Sunday 
afternoon, sun shining, sea blue, little white caps dancing 
on the water as the launch came in. At last the officer in 
command said, "There is Bourbourg," but it wasn't. It 
was Nieuport. And they said, "There is Dunkirk and the 
base," but it was Ostend and the Germans. And they 
steered straight toward the German guns until they were 
trapped. They were directly off Nieuport-Bains where 
the trenches reached the N~orth Sea. Shells fell all around 
and they jumped. It was just in time for there was a di- 
rect hit on the launch. A French plane came down and 
got one of the seven. Two were drowned. Two, one of 
them the big powerful doctor in command, got to the 
German lines safely. Two others swam toward the Bel- 
gian-British lines and made it, one being brought in safely 
by an English doctor who swam out to get him. 

We gave some 2,000 or 3,000 francs for the recreation 
fund at this base. They had no need of more. We took a 
sick man out for them by motor to Paris. A finer body 
of officers and men it would be hard to find anywhere. 

Then up came the Lafayette Escadrille, just back of 
Dunkirk, and we began to see their planes. We saw some- 
thing of Major Charles J. Biddle of Philadelphia when he 
fell near Ypres, and lay for weeks in the Ocean Hospital. 

General Harts came up from his post as head of the 



THE AMERICANS COME TO FLANDERS 243 

American Military Mission to the British Army, and 
said, "I have studied Nieuport and the water defenses of 
the Yser. I think the Belgians show technical and engi- 
neering skill of the highest kind in their water defenses. 
And they are mnch better soldiers than we have realized." 
All these were forerunners. In 1918, the whole appear- 
ance of the country between Le Havre or Paris and La 
Panne changed. Where there had been Belgian or British 
camps, we found Americans. Where there had been 
French sentries or smart Tommies, we found a 
new lot of American military police just starting 
in. And then all at once, without warning, the 
Americans reached the British sector of Flanders. 
The 27th Division of New York troops came 
under Major General John P. O'Eyan and we began to 
run into them at little villages like Oudezele and at the 
hotel in Cassel. The 30th Division of North Carolina 
troops came up under Brigadier General Samson L. Paison, 
who soon gave over command to Major General Edward 
M. Lewis; we found some of them at Watou and other 
villages nearby. Both divisions were brigaded with troops 
of the second British Army "in the Dickebush Lake and 
Sherpenberg and canal sectors, southwest of Ypres, July 
9 to August 23, 1918." These were horrible sectors as 
the Germans on Kemmel were shooting down into them 
constantly. On August 18, one division and on August 
23, the other division went into the line. From August 
31, to September 2, 1918, both were in the fight with the 
British which resulted in retaking Mount Kemmel. To 
all Americans in Flanders it was a proud day when the 
American troops fighting with dash and steady strength 
helped retake the high point which for so many weeks had 
menaced Belgium in the rear. Both the 27th and 30th 
won their great distinction the last of September and the 
first of October, 1918, in what was called breaking the 
Hindenburg line north of St. Quentin. The desperate 
work which these boys of New York and North Carolina 



244 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

did may be read in the figures of casualties. The 27th 
lost 8,986 men. The 30th lost 8,954 men. 

The Commission to Belgium had nothing to do officially 
with these troops. Men like Captain Bobo of the American 
Ked Cross in Paris were on the job and doing it well. But 
all our work depended on the issue of the battles these 
soldiers fought. Wainwright, now Assistant Secretary of 
War, and Kincaid, now Adjutant General of New York, 
got their baptism of fire in front of Kemmel. 

Just before the end, two other American divisions came 
up with a rush. One was the 37th, made up largely of 
Ohio National Guard troops, and the other the 91st, made 
up of drafted men from California, Washington, Oregon, 
Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska. 
They were attached to French Armies, a part of the group 
of armies operating under the King of the Belgians. Ma- 
jor General Charles S. Farnsworth commanded the 37th 
and Major General William H. Johnston the 91st. The 
Germans were moving eastward, making a stand first on 
the river Lys and then on the river Scheldt. Both divi- 
sions were in action repeatedly, the 37th among other 
things, effecting a crossing of the Scheldt under heavy fire 
and the 91st capturing Audenarde. Those were the days 
things changed so rapidly that no one knew just where the 
lines ran. We tried to go into Audenarde one night, but 
found the Germans still there. Coining back in the dark, 
the road for miles was filled with American boys of the 
91st moving up to go into action. The 37th had 5,243 
casualties and the 91st 5,778 casualties, but part of these 
were incurred in important operations in France as well 
as in the service in Flanders. 

The armistice found both divisions on the Scheldt ready 
to go on. A detachment of the 37th participated in the 
entry of King Albert into Brussels. 

American Ambulance Units served the French troops in 
King Albert's group of armies, and first our Bruges 
and later our Brussels office furnished these units with 



THE AMERICANS COME TO FLANDERS 245 

food and other supplies. And as Americans came strag- 
gling through Brussels later, on leave or on missions, 
there were many happy meetings and many chances to 
serve the boys from home. They were chances which 
every American relief worker, whatever his specific task, 
regarded as his first responsibility, and his most precious 
privilege. 

Toward the end of the war the King sent for us and 
said that he had under his control at St. Germain-en-laye 
near Paris the old chateau of Henry IV, furnished com- 
pletely, some eighty tons of coal, food supplies and per- 
sonnel, all of which he would like to turn over to the 
American Red Cross as a rest home for officers of the 
American Army, and the Red Cross. He said that he 
could not express in any adequate way the gratitude of 
his country for the work of the American Red Cross and 
for the divisions of the American Army which had been 
fighting on Belgian soil, but that he would like to do a little 
to show what he and all Belgians felt. We accepted the 
offer and turned the property over to the Commission to 
France which made use of it for some months. 

Situated on the heights west of the city, commanding 
a far view over the river valley and the great gray metropo- 
lis, with memories of Louis XIV, who was born there and 
of other notable events in French history, it now for the 
American Red Cross will be associated always with mem- 
ories of King Albert and of the brave American soldiers 
who won his undying gratitude. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

Closing Up 

R, HENRY P.- DAVISON", Chairman of the War 
Council of the American Red Cross, and Colonel H. 
D. Gibson, Commissioner for Europe, when they visited 
Belgium just before the armistice, made clear to us the 
jwlicy to be followed. It was to finish up the work we 
were in and to close up just as quickly after the war as 
possible. They did not attempt to fix arbitrarily a date 
for closing up the work in Belgium but said that they 
would be happy if it could be done without hardship well 
within six months after an armistice. 

When we met the representatives of Mr. Hoover in 
Brussels in November, 1918, Poland, Brown, Kittredge, 
Robinson-Smith and the other able men Hoover had 
about him, they said that they were withdrawing from 
Belgium just as quickly as the government could take 
charge of the food problem. 

At Le Havre we had talked frankly upon this subject 
with the different Belgian Ministers long before the 
end came and had reached a clear understanding. Sum- 
marized, their convictions were these: "For the sake 
of our own people and for our good name outside the 
country, we must make ourselves independent of foreign 
help just as quickly as possible. We are grateful for the 
American aid given. We could not have lived without 
it. It is our duty to show our gratitude by giving up 
further help." 

The Commissioner to Belgium on April 9, 1919, made 
a report to Colonel Robert E. Olds, Commissioner to 
Europe at that time in which he stated the situation as 
follows : 

246 



CLOSING UP 247 

"We have so done our work that we can. get out now. 
Having left responsibility to the Belgians, having worked 
always through their committees, their shoulders are 
squared to their jobs. There is no period of confusion to 
follow by our suddenly throwing a new load upon them. 

"Belgium needs the things which we cannot give: in- 
demnity from Germany, loans from the Allies, priority in 
raw materials, machinery and ships. 

"For reclaiming the destroyed areas, the government 
has its own machinery. That machinery is moving slowly 
and with some difficulty, but it is moving. The first of 
the refugees, reentering the destroyed areas, are meeting 
with great hardships. The evils of congestion are very 
grave in the cities and villages of Flanders nearest the 
old fighting . lines. But we have provided warehouses 
filled with food and clothing for use in these regions and 
these will be put under the Paris Bureau of the Red 
Cross in charge of this work for the devastated regions 
of France. 

"The Belgians are a competent people with men used to 
taking responsibility in every little town. 

"They have a King and Queen with enormous moral 
power and they use it steadily for right things. 

"Belgium can get along without us and it is our duty 
to leave." 

The closing weeks were marked by manifestations of 
gratitude on the part of Belgians of all classes from the 
King and Queen down to people in humble walks. 

On March 8, 1919, in closing the Ocean Hospital at La 
Panne as a war hospital, Dr. Depage called together his 
staff and stated to them the facts about the help given by 
the American Bed Cross to the Belgian Red Cross during 
the war, closing with the words: "The American Red 
Cross deserves in the highest degree the gratitude of all 
Belgians." 

The Ministers associated with our work wrote a letter, 
summarizing what had been done and expressing gratitude, 



248 THE LITTLE CORNER NEVER CONQUERED 

and these letters are a part of the permanent records of 
the American Red Cross. 

Helleputte said, "As head of the official Belgian com- 
mittee for refugees in France, I was in a position to 
know and appreciate your effective work. Belgian refu- 
gees in Trance learned to bless the name of the American 
Red Cross." 

Berryer said, "What your work meant, I, as Minister of 
the Interior, was in a position to clearly understand, and 
with full heart I express the gratitude of my countrymen." 

General De Ceuninck, Minister of War, M. Emile 
Brunet, Minister of State, M. Paul Heger of the Univer- 
sity of Brussels, and the heads of a large number of char- 
itable organizations wrote with equal frankness and ap- 
preciation. 

In the letter of Emile Vandervelde there were two or 
three sentences of especial significance: "I am not able 
to put into words what I feel about the vastness of the 
work done by the American Red Cross for Belgium. The 
untiring activity of the organization in very dark hours 
strengthened the morale of the army and of our people in 
exile, permitted us to sustain the struggle with more vigor, 
and to bring back to the country on our return a greater 
faith in the destiny of the Belgian people. 

"Your organization has revealed every day, even to the 
most humble of our people, the nobility of heart, the 
righteousness of thought, the versatility and frankness of 
the spirit of the Americans. We have found in the 
American Red Cross an image of the American people." 

Letters of appreciation still follow us across the ocean. 
ISTow, two years later, there comes a letter from a private 
soldier of the Belgian Army, asking nothing, wanting 
nothing, but simply saying, "I would not be alive today if 
it had not been for the American Red Cross, and once 
in a while I cannot help writing to tell you so." 

The Commission closed its office on April 19, 1919, and 
the Commissioner and staff left the country at once. 



APPENDIX I 

AMERICAN RED CROSS 

COMMISSION TO BELGIUM. 
Commissioner : 

Ernest P. Bicknell, 

September 1917 to October 1918. 

Acting Commissioner: 

John van Schaick, Jr., 

November 15, 1917— February 1, 1918, 
September 1, 1918— October 15, 1918. 

Commissioner : 

John van Schaick, Jr., 
October 1918, 
April 1919. 

Deputy Commissioner: 

John van Schaick, Jr.. 

September 1, 1917— October 1918. 
J. W. Lee, Jr., 

October 1, 1919. 

Departments : 

Public Information : 

J. W. Lee, Jr. 
Medical Service : 

Dr. Edwards A. Park 
Refugee Service: 

Ernest W. Corn 
Work for Children: 

John W. Gummere 
Aide to Commissioner: 

Leonard Chester Jones 
Paris Bureau: 

William C. Titcomb 

Albert H. Garriques 
Auditor : 

William MacDonald 
Accountant : 

Francis de Sales Mulvey 
Secretary to Commissioner : 

Grace V. Bicknell 
Translators : 

Mrs. Julia R. van Schaick and Mrs. Leonard Chester Joneg 

249 



250 



APPENDIX 



Personnel : 



Mme. Cecille Amehin 
Mile. Marguerite d' Arbour 
Miss Elizabeth Ashe 
Mile. Melanie Avery 
C. C. Balderston 
Miss Alberte Bicknell 
Mrs. Ernest P. Bicknell 
Miss Helen Binsted 
Mile. Germaine Blais 
Mr. Paul Briche 
Mme. Nora Brule 
Mr. August Bruneel 
Miss Lucy Le Carou 
Dr. Dorothy Child 
Dr. Florence Child 
Mile. Laura de Coninck 
Mr. Remy Cordier 
Mr. Ernest W. Corn 
Miss Katherine Cox 
Miss Charlotte Crawford 
Dr. Rena Crawford 
Miss Ethel M. Damon 
Miss Jeanne Dardenne 
Miss Frances Goldie Dees 
Mile. Rosa Delforge 
Leon Deneubourg 
Mile. Julia Deprez 
Mile. Despert 
M. Antoine Dognes 
Miss Elizabeth Durand 
Mile. Anne Duron 
Miss Florence Fisher 
Mile. Simonne Fisq 
Mile. Clemence Fontaine 
Mme. Langeais Fontenelle 
Dr. Pose Friedman 
M. Albert G. Garrigues 
Mr. John W. Gummere 
Dr. Ruth Aline Guy 
Dr. Royal Storre Haynes 
Miss Maud Heath 
Dr. Leonard Chester Jones 
Miss Henriette Kaczka 
Mile. Cecile L. Kievits 
Dr. J. H. Mason Knox 
Mrs. Marcel Landrieu 



Mr. James Wideman Lee 

Dr. Lienart 

Miss Grace Lucas 

Mr. W. A. MacDonald 

Mile. Edith Le Manchec 

Mme. Melanie Le Manchec 

Mile. Marie Melis 

Mile. Suzanne Menu 

Mile. Frieda Mortelmans 

Mr. F. D. Mulvey 

Mile. Lucie Mque 

Mrs. Francis J. O'Reilly 

Dr. Edwards A. Park 

Mr. Ernest B. Parsons 

Mr. Jacques Pierloot 

Dr. L. Pilleboue 

Miss Laura Praet 

Miss Helen de Puydt 

Dr. Walter R. Ramsey 

Mile. Germaine Randexhe 

Mr. J. Forrest Reilly 

S. E. Richardson 

Mme. Alix Rollin 

Dr. Alma Rotholz 

Miss Helen Sheridan 

Miss Bertha Smith 

Mr. A. L. Stafford 

Miss Helen C. Sutherland 

Mr. Wm. Caldwell Titcomb 

Miss S. G. Turner 

Mr. A. C. Vail 

Katherine A. Valise 

Mr. Joseph van den Broeck 

M. Van den Kerkhoven 

Miss Philo Vandervelde 

Mr. Henri Joseph van Nevel 

Mrs. John van Schaick, Jr. 

Mrs. Constance B. Vaughan 

Miss Mariette Vermeersch 

Mr. Camille Victoor 

M. Remy Vincent 

Miss Christoval S. Waldron 

Miss Ruth W. Washburn 

Miss Mabel Wilcox 

Jonathan A. Williams 



APPENDIX 251 

APPENDIX II 

EXPENDITURES FOR RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

June 12, 1917— June 30, 1919. 

The Belgian relief of the American Red Cross was first con- 
ducted by the Department for Belgium of the American Red Cross 
Commission for France, and since January 1, 1918, by the American 
Red Cross Commission for Belgium. This work was not confined to 
the soil of Belgium, but extended to France and other places where 
there were Belgian soldiers or refugees. Most of the work of the 
Belgian Commission was accomplished through well-established 
Belgian relief organizations. 

The following expenditures cover the Belgian Relief of the 
American Red Cross from July 1, 1917 to June 30, 1919: 

MILITARY BELIEF ACTIVITIES $1,189,679.48 

Establishment, equipment and maintenance of hos- 
pitals, canteens, and centers of recreation; pro- 
vision of rest areas for Belgian nurses ; supplies 
for hospitals and canteens; gifts and extra com- 
forts for soldiers; and cash donations to hospital, 
canteen and recreational organizations. 

CIVIL HOSPITALS $ 364,626.68 

Establishment and maintenance of Belgian typhoid 
and other civil hospitals, including supplies and 
equipment; provision for removal of hospital pa- 
tients; and cash donations to other organiza- 
tions, including the Belgian Red Cross. 

RELIEF OF CHILDREN $1,159,553.54 

Removal of Belgian children from dangerous or 
congested areas; establishment and equipment of 
schools, colonies, pavilions and hospitals for chil- 
dren, and of maternity hospitals; care of chil- 
dren, including provision of food, supplies and 
medical service; return to Belgium of children's 
colonies; and cash donations to children's relief 
organizations. 

BELIEF OF REFUGEES $1,520,194.50 

Removal of refugees from dangerous or congested 
areas; provision of housing, relief supplies and 
medical service; improvement of living condi- 
tions; clothing for discharged Belgian soldiers; 
assistance to returning refugees; and contribu- 
tions to other organizations and to the Belgian 
Government for relief activities. 



252 APPENDIX 

GENERAL SUPERVISION $ 93,035.14 

Operation of headquarters relief, supply and man- 
agement bureaus, including storage, transporta- 
tion and distribution of supplies. 

Total for relief work in Belgium $4,327,089.74 



APPENDIX III 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR BELGIUM FURNISHED 

BY DR. RENE SAND OF THE 

BELGIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY 

AND OF THE MEDICAL FACULTY OF 

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS 

October 1920. 

For all of Belgium. 

Births Deaths 

(per 1,000 inhabitants) 

1913 21.6 13.8 

1914 20.2 14.1 

1915 16.0 12.9 

1916 12.8 13.2 

1917 11.3 16.4 

1918 11.4 21.0 

1919 16.9 15.0 

1920 

For Brussels. 

Birth Death Tuberculosis Infant 
rate rate mortality mortality 



1914 16.4 

1915 15.8 

1916 10.7 

1917 9.2 

1918 7.5 

1919 11.9 

1920 



000 inhj 


ibitants ) 


(on 1,000 

living 

births ) 


14.9 


1.7 


151.2 


13.3 


1.7 


121.4 


14.7 


2.2 


119.9 


18.3 


3.5 


124.8 


21.0 


3.5 


124.2 


13.1 


1.9 


82.7 



APPENDIX §53 

APPENDIX IV 

CITATIONS FOR MEDALS AWARDED BY THE 

AMERICAN RED CROSS UPON 

RECOMMENDATION OP THE COMMISSION TO BELGIUM. 

SILVER MEDALS. 

HER MAJESTY, ELIZABETH, Queen of the Belgians— 

As Honorary President of the Croix Rouge de Belgique, her 
Majesty labored constantly to promote close cooperation with the 
American Red Cross. She directed the organization of the Chil- 
dren's Colony at Le Glandier, Correze, France, maintained by the 
Red Cross. She visited canteens and hospitals at the front, in 
which American Red Cross work was carried on, inspiring and 
assisting by her coolness, her skill, her sympathy and courage. She 
assisted our work throughout the entire period of the existence of 
the Commission from September 1917 to April 1919. 

MONSIEUR PAUL BERRYER, throughout the war and until the 
armistice, Minister • of the Interior in the Belgian Government at 
Le Havre; from November 11, 1918, High Commissioner of Belgium 
for the return of Belgian Refugees from France — 

To his constant friendship and assistance the American Red 
Cross owes its opportunity for service to Belgian civilians — chil- 
dren, refugees, and civilian sick. He placed himself and his motors 
at the service of the Commission, made long journeys with the 
American Red Cross officers and rendered distinguished service to 
the organization, throughout the entire period of the operations of 
the Commission for Belgium, from September 1917 to April 1919. 

DOCTOR ANTOINE DEPAGE, Colonel in the Medical Service of 
the Belgian Army, Field Director of the Croix Rouge de Belgique 
and founder of the Ocean Hospital at La Panne — 

Doctor Depage cooperated constantly with the officers of the 
American Red Cross stationed on this front. He furnished lodgings 
for workers, German prisoners for labor, and gave wise advice to 
the members of the Commission. He accepted surgeons and nurses 
of the American Red Cross, both for the help they could give and 
to enable them to get the experience they desired. He gave to the 
American Red Cross its largest opportunity to serve the hospitals 
and surgical posts at the Belgian front, his services extending 
throughout the entire period of our operations from September 1917, 
to April 1919. 

MADAME THERESE HYMANS, wife of Monsieur Paul Hymans, 
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Belgian Government at Le Havre — 
By virtue of her official position, and conspicuous ability, 
Madame Hymans rendered distinguished service to the American 
Red Cross during the entire period of its work in Belgium from 



254 APPENDIX 

September 1917 to April 1919. As President of the Society of 
"Centers of Recreation at the Belgian Front" she opened the way 
for important work by the American Red Cross for a great section 
of the Belgian Army at the front. Upon the entry of the Belgian 
Army into Germany she placed her trained workers at the service 
of the American Red Cross and made possible the establishment of 
canteens and rest huts for the men holding the Rhine. 

GENERAL L. MELIS, Inspector General of the Service de Sante, 
of the Belgian Army — 

By virtue of his position at the head of the medical and sur- 
gical work of the Belgian Army, and as active President of the Croix 
Rouge de Belgique, he promoted close cooperation with the Ameri- 
can Red Cross, during all of our operations from September 1917 
to April 1919. 

Upon liberation of occupied Belgium, he rendered distinguished 
service to the officers of the American Red Cross, guiding them per- 
sonally into the unknown regions, and enabling them to get the 
information on which to base prompt and intelligent service to both 
wounded soldiers and civilians. 

CARDINAL MERCIER, Archbishop of Malines, Soldier of the 
Cross, brave leader of the Belgian people in their refusal to accept 
German rule — 

He became the friend and adviser of the officers of the Amer- 
ican Red Cross upon the reentry of the Belgian Army in November 
1918, and rendered distinguished service personally and through 
his priests and people in directing help of the American Red Cross 
for the liberated areas, until the close of the activities of the 
American Red Cross Commission for Belgium in April 1919. 

MONSIEUR EMILE VANDERVELDE, Minister of Intendance of 
the Belgian Government at Le Havre, until November 11, 1918, and 
since that date Minister of Justice — 

To this intrepid minister, the American Red Cross owes many 
opportunities for service to the fighting men of the Belgian Army, 
both in the trenches and in work centers at the rear. Through his 
personal guidance, the officers of the American Red Cross were en- 
abled to see the most dangerous and difficult situations confronting 
the soldiers, and relieve their sufferings. President of the Society 
of "Gifts for Belgian Soldiers," he placed all the resources of his 
society at the service of the American Red Cross, and made a work- 
ing agreement with the American Red Cross which enormously ex- 
tended the usefulness of our organization, during the whole period 
of our operations from September 1917 to April 1919. 

MADAME JULIETTE CARTON DE WIART, wife of Henry Carton 
de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice until November 11, 1919 — 

Resident of Brussels under the Germans, and for many months 
after the occupation, a prisoner in Germany, Madame de Wiart 



APPENDIX 255 

reached Le Havre just before the arrival of the American Red 
Cross in September 1917. 

Master of the English language, deeply sympathetic with the 
United States and a student of our institutions, she placed herself 
and her wide experience unreservedly at the service of the Amer- 
ican Eed Cross, to the close of our activities in April 1919. In 
work for refugees and children, in distribution of clothing, in or- 
ganization of children's colonies, she rendered distinguished service. 



BRONZE MEDALS. 



CORPORAL ALBERT, Soldier of the Belgian Army- 
Canteen worker of the "Society of Gifts for Belgian Soldiers," 
this man rendered valuable service in the canteens established by 
the American Red Cross at La Panne, at Vincken and after the 
armistice in the occupied part of Germany. At all times during 
the period of our operations in Belgium from September 1917 to 
April 1919 he showed courage and devotion to the work. 

MADAME FERNAND BAETENS, of Brussels, representative of 
the American Red Cross for the occupied territory — 

By virtue of her position as the wife of one of the officers of 
the Commission for Relief in Belgium and because of her rare judg- 
ment in questions of civilian relief, her courage and cooperative 
spirit, Madame Baetens rendered conspicuous service to the Amer- 
ican Red Cross, to the close of our activities in April 1919, disburs- 
ing special funds very effectively and keeping records of permanent 
value. She was chairman of a committee for special cases under 
the Committee for Relief in Belgium throughout the period of the 
German occupation and thereafter, and through her the American 
Red Cross was enabled to reach hundreds of cases of civilian distress 
in the occupied territories. She showed rare judgment and genuine 
heroism in this work. 

MONSIEUR J. BRAEKERS, of Belgium— 

A brave artilleryman in the ranks of the Belgium Army the 
first half of the war, a faithful and efficient private secretary of 
the Minister of the Interior of the Belgian Government the last two 
years of the war, he was the best informed man in the Belgian 
Government upon both governmental and private agencies at work 
in the field of relief. Charged by the Minister especially with the 
duty of aiding the American Red Cross, he rendered very valuable 
and meritorious service during all of our work in Belgium from 
September 1917 to April 1919 in giving information, establishing 
relationships and securing permits through which much of the best 
work of the American Red Cross for Belgium was done. 



256 APPENDIX 

MR. L. J. CADBURY, British Red Cross Society and head of the 
Transportation Department of the Friends' Ambulance Unit — 

An unusually gallant and forceful man, he rendered especially 
meritorious service in directing the lorries of the American Red 
Cross and the Friends' Ambulance Unit in their work of evacuating 
civilians from points of danger and saving valuable stores from the 
Germans. Cited twice by the French military authorities for gal- 
lantry under fire, given the Croix de Guerre, a man of wide experi- 
ence at the front, he cooperated loyally and efficiently with the 
American Red Cross during all of its operations, often visiting our 
headquarters at La Panne and furnishing intelligence of great value. 

MONSIEUR ERNEST CLAES, of Belgium- 
Veteran of the Battle of the Yser, four times wounded, prisoner 
of war, reforme, this man found his way at last to Le Havre where 
he was made a secretary of the Official Belgium Committee in charge 
of refugees in France. He rendered very meritorious service to the 
Bureau of Refugee Service of the American Red Cross from Sep- 
tember 1917 to April 1919, traveling constantly with agents of the 
American Red Cross showing sound judgment and conspicuous de- 
votion in American Red Cross work for his countrymen — especially 
in the early part of the work, saving us both time and money. 

MADAME GABRIELLE D'lETEREN, Director of the Society of 
Gifts for Belgian Soldiers, Agent of the American Red Cross in 
work for the fighting men — 

Madame D'leteren showed organizing ability of a high order 
throughout the first part of the war. She traveled between Brus- 
sels and the Belgian Army on the Yser carrying thousands of letters, 
assisting the secret service, exposing herself to constant danger in 
the long journey across the barred frontier to Holland, and then to 
England, France and Free Belgium. This intimate knowledge of 
conditions on both sides of the lines gave her great prestige and 
influence with the soldiers. All this she used to make the Amer- 
ican Red Cross known and effective during the entire period of our 
operations from September 1917 to April 1919, in distributing gifts, 
establishing canteens and increasing the courage of the fighting men. 

LIEUTENANT DUCLOT, (Belgian), an engineer officer of the 
Belgian Army, assigned to the Society of "Centers of Recreation 
at the Belgian Front." 

He cooperated in a most intelligent and loyal way with the 
American Red Cross, erecting tents and barracks for recreation, 
superintending the installation of cinemas and the organization of 
this work. His services were extremely valuable to the Commis- 
sion for Belgium and extended over the entire period of our opera- 
tions from September 1917 to April 1919. 



APPENDIX 257 

CAPTAIN CHARLES GRAUX, of the Belgian Army— 

As successively business manager of the Ocean Hospital at 
La Panne; director of the Colony of the Queen at Le dandier and 
Private Secretary to Her Majesty, Captain Graux was in close 
touch with the work of the American Red Cross for Belgium from 
the beginning in September 1917 to the end in April 1919. Con- 
spicuous for his intelligence, his patience, his sympathy, his cour- 
age and his gifts of organization he placed them all at the service 
of the American Red Cross. He overcame the international diffi- 
culties in the way of bringing over six hundred anaemic children 
from Occupied Belgium and the other difficulties incident to the 
organization and maintenance of a school for them in France en- 
tirely directed and supported by the American Red Cross. 

MONSIEUR GEORGES HELLEPUTTE, until September 11, Min- 
ister of Public Works in the Belgian Government at Le Havre and 
Member of the Chamber of Deputies — 

As President of the Official Belgian Committee for Refugees 
in France, M. Helleputte cooperated fully with the American Red 
Cross from the opening of our operations in September 1917 to 
their close in April 1919, lending his trained inspectors to go with 
American Red Cross workers to different refugee centers and plac- 
ing himself personally at the service of the Bureau of Refugee 
Service. He furnished without charge attractive offices for the Com- 
mission for Belgium in the Ministry of Public Works at Le Havre 
at a time when Le Havre was so congested that our work was seri- 
ously handicapped by lack of space. He personally conducted 
American Red Cross workers to Ostend, Bruges and other places 
in Flanders, immediately upon the liberation rendering valuable 
service by his intimate knowledge of the Flemish language and 
people. 

MADAME ROLIN HYMANS (Belgian) Wife of Captain Rolin 
Hymans of the Belgian Army, sister of the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs of the Belgian Government — 

Both by position and ability, Madame Hymans was enabled to 
render valuable service to the American Red Cross during the en- 
tire period of our operations from September 1917 to April 1919. 
Her devotion, great courage and common sense were conspicuous 
throughout the war. As head of the American Red Cross Creche 
at La Panne, as Director of the American Red Cross Nurses Home 
at Etretat, as constant friend and advisor of the Commission for 
Belgium, her work was meritorious to a high degree. 

DOCTOR JONLET, Director of the Belgian Civil and Military Hos- 
pital at La Chartreuse and of the American Red Cross Children's 
Colony at Recq — 

Through Doctor Jonlet, the American Red Cross had many 
opportunities during the whole period of its operations from Sep- 



258 APPENDIX 

tember 1917 to April 1919, to serve both soldiers and civilians. La 
Chartreuse, fifty miles from the fighting lines, was so situated that 
it could be quickly reached from the front and yet was itself com- 
paratively safe. It contained 1100 beds, was used as a children's 
colony, a hospital for the aged, a hospital for sick civilians and 
a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. All its resources were 
placed at the service of the American Red Cross for shelter of per- 
sonnel, storage of supplies and repair of trucks. By the intelligent 
cooperation of Doctor Jonlet, the American Red Cross was able to 
help both Belgian and French civilians in the zone of the British 
Army. By his help, the American Red Cross purchased barracks 
for 500 children in a time of great emergency, leased the Chateau 
of Recq and established a children's colony under his supervision, 
the entire support and direction of which was taken by the Amer- 
ican Red Cross. He showed sound judgment and great resourceful- 
ness and rendered service to the American Red Cross of great merit. 

MR. W. MORDEY (British) Adjutant of the Friends' Ambulance 
Unit until February 1919 and Major of the American Red Cross in 
charge of work in the destroyed villages of Belgium — 

He was a business man of ability who had been in Northern 
France and Belgium from the fall of 1914, and as a result of his 
familiarity with conditions in Belgium Major Mordey was of great 
value to the American Red Cross from the beginning to the end of 
our work. He was distinguished for calm, cool judgment under the 
most difficult and dangerous conditions. His friendship for the 
United States and his loyalty to the American Red Cross, joined 
to his great ability, made his service one of conspicuous merit and 
worth. 

COLONEL PIERRE NOLF, Head of the Medical Service of the Bel- 
gian Army, Director of the Belgian Military Hospital at Cabour, 
physician to the Royal Family and confidential advisor to Her 
Majesty, the Queen — 

Doctor Nolf rendered meritorious service to the American Red 
Cross in facilitating the organization of work in cooperation with 
their Majesties and in giving constant and intelligent advice upon 
all hospital work undertaken. His services were a distinct con- 
tribution to the success of our efforts from September 1917 when 
we entered Belgium to April 1919 when our activities ceased. 

PRIVATE POUPAERT (Belgian) Soldier of the Belgian Army 
and Director of the office force of the Society of Gifts for Belgian 
Soldiers — 

This society became an effective agency of the American Red 
Cross in canteen and recreation work at the Belgian front. Private 
Poupaert showed resourcefulness and force in times of emergency 
and real ability at all times. He cooperated loyally and effectively 
with the American Red Cross during our entire operations from 
September 1917 to April 1919. 



APPENDIX 259 

DOCTOR JACQUES ROSKAM, Director of the Belgian Civil Hos- 
pital at St. Idesbalde, Leysele and the Dorntje — 

Detailed by the army for civilian work, living at the Belgian 
front and often in danger, Doctor Roskam dealt with the problems 
of contagious disease and other civilian sickness in Free Belgium. 
He placed his experience at the service of the doctors and nurses 
of the American Red Cross during the entire period of our opera- 
tions from September 1917 to April 1919 and cooperated with them 
closely and faithfully in improving health conditions in Flanders. 
He assisted workers of the American Red Cross in evacuating civil- 
ian sick from points of danger, rendering service of great merit. 

MONSIEUR JEAN STEYAERT, Commissaire d'Arrondissement de 
Furnes, — Dixmude; Representative of the Civil Government of Bel- 
gium in the forward areas of the army — 

It was his duty to superintend the evacuation of civilians and 
relieve special cases of distress. He took charge of the reception of 
the stores and erection of barracks for the American Red Cross. In 
time of bombardment, he assisted in the removal of valuable pro- 
perty of the American Red Cross from Furnes. He placed himself 
and all the resources of his office at the disposal of the officers of 
the American Red Cross during the entire period of our operations 
from September 1917 to April 1919, rendering highly meritorious 
service. He was regarded by all in Belgium as one of the bravest 
and most intelligent civil officials, and by the American Red Cross 
authorities as among the bravest of our agents. 

CORPORAL ANTOINE STOEFS, (Belgian Soldier of the Belgian 
Army ) — 

Professor of the Normal School of Brussels, a man of organ- 
izing ability, he rendered meritorious service to the American Red 
Cross through the Society of Gifts for Belgian Soldiers during all 
of our operations from September 1917 to April 1919. He was 
directly in charge of the "Cercles Militaires" or Clubs for Soldiers 
at the front. Especially at the time of the advance of the Belgian 
Army in October 1918, he showed great ability and fine courage in 
getting supplies over the destroyed areas to the new fighting front. 
His supplies reached the vanguard of the army before any other 
except small stores dropped from aeroplanes. He did as much at? 
anyone to make the name of the American Red Cross known and 
loved by the private soldiers. 

CAPTAIN MEABURN TATHAM, of the British Army and British 
Red Cross Society, and Commander of the English Friends' Ambu- 
lance Unit at Dunkirk — 

The Friends' Ambulance Unit was the transportation agency 
of the Commission and the relationship of the two organizations 
became a close partnership. Captain Tatham rendered the Amer- 
ican Red Cross service conspicuous for courage, intelligence and un- 



260 APPENDIX 

selfishness during the entire period of our operations in Belgium 
from September 1917 to April 1919, took our officers frequently to 
British General Headquarters, and different army headquarters to 
make us acquainted. At the time of the great German advance of 
1918, the Commission for Belgium was put in charge of all Amer- 
ican Red Cross agencies in the British zone. Our success in dealing 
with the refugee situation was due in large measure to this devoted 
officer. 

REMY VINCENT (Belgian) Private Soldier of the Belgian Army, 
chauffeur for the American Red Cross from the fall of 1917 — 

He was known as the most skilful and daring chauffeur of the 
Minister of War — a great driver, a skilful mechanic and a loyal, 
honest man. By his knowledge of roads and conditions at the front, 
and his unerring judgment and great skill under shell fire, he un- 
questionably saved the lives of many of our personnel. By his 
keen intelligence and quick decision, he rendered service of great 
value in problems of relief both civil and military. By his ability 
to work long periods without rest, he saved valuable time for his 
superior officers. 

APPENDIX V 

LIST OF PLACES WHICH RECEIVED AID FROM THE 
BELGIAN COMMISSION OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS. 

A total of 274 activities in 169 places. 

BELGIUM. 

In Belgium 72 activities in 35 places. 

Adinkerke : Nine warehouses 

Food and supplies distributed. 

Antwerp: Civil Hospital 

Two carloads of supplies given. 

Alveringhem : Cinema 

For Belgian soldiers. 

Audenarde: Supplies for civilians 

After German retreat. 

Belgian Front: Cinema (Abbe Raepsaet) 

UEnseignement des Soldats (Minister Poullet) 

15,000 francs. 
Lighting of Cantonments 

50,000 francs. 
Mobile Surgical and Autoradiological Carriage 

170,000 francs. 

Beveren Hospital: Medical and Surgical Supplies 



APPENDIX 



261 



Boitshoucke : 



Bruges : 



Brussels : 



For school children within the lines 

Belgian Army, — One barrack at General 
Bucquoy's request. 

Advance Surgical Post in Normal School 

Supplies. 
Civil Hospital 

Carload of supplies and 5000 francs. 
Hopital Saint Andre 
Refugees Relief Committee 

Food and clothing. 
Warehouse of Red Cross 

Distributing center for supplies. 

Assistance Discrete 

10,000 francs monthly from 
August 1918 to February 1919. 

Belgian Red Cross 

1,000,000 francs for work for the mutilat- 
ed; 300,000 francs for cows; 1,000,000 
francs for maintenance of hospitals. 

Le Bercail 

5,000 francs. 

Boy Scouts 

100,000 francs. 

Children's work 

To the Queen 1,250,000 francs. 

Commission for Relief in Belgium 

For their Relief Committee at their Brus- 
sels' office — 100,000 francs per month from 
September 1918 to April 1919. 

Creche of Madame Vandervelde, 10,000 francs. 

Enfants Martyrs 
40,000 francs. 

Edith Cavell Nursing Home 
10,000 francs. 

Foyer des Orphelins 
400,000 francs. 

Gifts for Belgian Soldiers 

Formerly at Ste. Adresse. 

About 2,000,000 francs for its various 

activities. 

Hospital Work, Madame John de Mot 
10,000 francs. 

Infirmeries de Sainte Camille 
10,000 francs. 

Journalists, Belief of Belgian 

10,000 francs per month from April 1918 
to February 1919. 



262 



APPENDIX 



Cabour : 
Couthove : 

Courtrai : 



Coxyde : 
Ebblhighem ; 



Les Enfants du Peuple 
5,000 francs. 

GEuvre of Recreation for Soldiers 
(Madame Hymans) 
245,000 francs. 

Petites Roses de la Reine 
60,000 francs. 

Pouponniere Baby Work of Countess d'Ursell 
50,000 francs. 

Prisoners Returned 
60,000 francs. 

Queen's Purse 

50,000 francs given to Queen to buy com- 
forts for men in bospitals. 

Relief of Pauvres Honteux — Baroness de Woot 
2,500 francs per month for four months 
beginning August 31, 1918. 

Secours Urgent- — Countess de Beughem 
20,000 francs. 

Tuberculosis Work 

To the Queen, 1,200,000 francs. 

Tuberculosis Hospital 

1000 beds and furnishings. (Above sal- 
vage from evacuated American hospitals.) 

University of Brussels 
100,000 francs. 

Military Hospital near Adinkerke 

Serum, food, medical supplies, dressings. 

Hopital Civilian (Elizabeth) 

Medical supplies, dressings, two ambu- 
lances. 

Civilian Hospital under Friends' Ambulance 
Unit — Red Cross Warehouse Distributing 
center for supplies. Supplies, transporta- 
tion and 17,477 francs. 

Cinema. 

Children's Colony, afterward removed to 

Sablon St. Livrade and Tomebouc. 

Condensed milk, clothing and 14,600 francs 

for repairs. 

To St. Livrade and Tomebouc, sent food, 

bedding and 1000 yards of sheeting. 
Hospital in barracks left by Colony, also a 

tent hospital in connection with refugee 

camp close by. 

Supplies and financial aid. 



APPENDIX 



263 



Elverdinghe : 
Furnes : 
Ghent: 



La Panne: 



Leysele : 



To Dr. Louf, a barrack for small civil hospital, 
also medical supplies. 

Refugee relief 

Food and clothing. 

To Mayor 

200,000 francs for relief of refugees and 

children. 
To Inspector Service de Smite 

3,000 francs. 
Warehouse 

Red Cross distributing center for supplies. 

Canteen 

Barrack given by Red Cross. Aided in 

furnishings and support. 
Cinema 

Through Gifts for Belgian Soldiers. 
Convalescent Home for Working Girls 

100,000 francs. 
Creche of Mnie. Rolin Hymans — 

Barrack and financial aid. 
Belgische Standard Educational Work 

' 15,000 francs. 
Library 

Aided through gifts for Belgian soldiers. 
Ocean Hospital (Military) 

Medical supplies, dressings, comforts. 
Ouvroir 

Laundry and repair shop in connection 

with the Bains Militaires. 

9,000 francs given to aid families of killed 

and wounded when laundry was bombed. 
Phonograph and Disc Repair Shop 

Financial Aid. 
Repos de Sainte Elizabeth 

Clothing. 
Vestiaire 

Supported entirely by American Red 

Cross. 
CJi ildren's Colony — never occupied as such, but 

turned into Refugee Clearing House — 12 

barracks, brick bathhouse and kitchen; 

American Red Cross supported this en- 
tirely. 
Civilian Hospital 

Furnishings and part of cost of erection 

of barracks paid for by American Red 

Cross. 



264 



APPENDIX 



Liege : 



Malines : 
Mons : 

Ostend : 
Poperinghe : 

Somergliem : 
St. Idesbalde : 



Termonde : 
Thielt: 
Tournai : 

Vinckem : 



Waeregliem : 
Waerschoote : 
Wyenburgh : 



Cinema 

Given by American Red Cross through 

Gifts for Belgian Soldiers. 
Maternity Hospital, formerly at Rousbrugge. 

Layettes and quarters furnished at Ley- 

sele in the barracks at colony. 

Children's Work of Mademoiselle Pontiere 

10,000 francs. 
Civil Hospital 

Two carloads of supplies. 
Playworh of American Friends for Children 

3,000 francs per month, for three months 

to get work started. 
University of Liege 

40,000 francs. 

Cardinal Mercier 

100,000 francs for civilian relief. 

Hospital 

Medical supplies, financial aid. 
Supplies for civilians after German retreat. 
Hopital Elizabeth 

Same as Couthove 
Supplies after retreat of Germans. 
Civilian Hospital 

Same as Civil Hospital at Leysele. 
Foyer Ecossais 

See Foyer Ecossais at Neuilley, France. 
Fifty houses rebuilt. 
Civilian Hospital reconstructed 

25,000 francs. 
Friends' Ambulance Hospital 

Supplies, camions. 
Cinema 

Through Gifts for Belgian Soldiers. 
Emergency canteen 

Through Gifts for Belgian Soldiers. 
Military Hospital 

500,000 francs on expense of building. 
Queen's School 

100,000 francs for a building. 

1,000 francs for toys. 
Supplies for civilians after German retreat. 
Supplies for civilians after German retreat. 
Emergency canteen 

Through Gifts for Belgian Soldiers. 



APPENDIX 



265 



Albi (Tarn) 
Anneey : 



FRANCE. 

In France, 181 activities, 125 places. 

Children's Colony 
500 francs. 



Arromanches 
(Calvados) : 

Angerville 

(near Havre) : 

Auberville 

(near Havre) : 

Auvours : 

Bacqueville ( S. T. ) : 

Ballainvilliers 

(S. & 0.): 
Bayonne 

(Basses Pyrenees] 
Beau-Marais 

(near Calais) : 



Bonnieres sur Seine 

(S. & O.): 
Bordeaux: 



Bougival (S. & 0.) 
Boulogne : 

Bourbourg (Nord) 
Caestre (Nord) : 



Children's Colony 
Games. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital 

Medical supplies, clothing, recreation 

equipment. 
Military Hospital 

Medical supplies, clothing, recreation 

equipment. 
Training Center 

Games, comforts, phonographs. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Aviation Field 
Building for canteen 
Cinema 
Kepairs 

27,259.80 francs. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Committee for Refugees 

Clothing and financial aid. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Fleet Patrol 

Clothing — 2000 francs. 
Refugees relief through Sous-Prefet. 
Military Hospital 
X-Ray Machine 
Piano 

Canvass, paint, etc. 
Creche and Baby Hospital 

Supplies — 2000 francs. 



266 



APPENDIX 



Calais : 



Campeaux (S. I.) : 

Cap Ferrat (Alpes 
Maritimes) : 

Caudebec en Caux 
(S.I.): 

Cayeux-sur-nier : 

Chateaugiron 
(near Rennes) : 

Chanay : 



Cette: 

Chevilly (Seine) : 

Clermont-Ferrand : 

Criquetot-sous-Ouville 
(S.I.): 

Dunkirk : 



Elbeuf (S. I.): 



Children's Colony _ 

Clothing. 
Emergency Hospital (Mme. De Hemptinne) 

Supplies. 
Home du Permissionaire 

Clothing, crutches, cigarettes. 
Refugee Relief 

Through American Consul. 
See Gravelines for Hospital Porte of 

Gravelines. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital 

Barrack and dental instruments. 
10,000 francs. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital 
Supplies. 

Sanatorium Elizabeth for Tuberculosis. 
X-Ray Machine. 

Clothing amounting to 2,162 francs. 
Refugee Relief Committee 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 

Convent des Peres 
Convent des Soeurs 

Refugee Relief 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing and sewing machine. 

Alexandra Hospital 

Supplies and Ambulances. 
Barge Annex to Alexandra Hospital 

10,000 francs. 
(Euvre des Mariniers et des Orphelins de la 
Guerre 

10,000 francs. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Union Beige 

Refugee relief. 



APPENDIX 



267 



Etretat (S. I.) 



Eu: 

Fontenay aux Roses 
(Seine) : 

Frethun ( near 
Calais) : 

Garches (S. & 0.) : 

Gommerville (S. I. ) : 

Grandes Dalles ' 
(S. L): 

Grandes Ventes 
(S. I.): 

Gravelines ( near 
Calais) : 

Graville : 

Graville Ste. 
Honorine : 

Grignon-Orly 
(Seine) : 

Grosfys (S. L): 

Guemps (Pas de 
Calais) : 

Honfleur : 

Job (Auvergne) : 

Jouey-les-Tours : 



La Celle St. Cloud 
(S. & 0.): 



Children's Colony 

Food supplies and 1,000 francs. 
Home de Convalescence for Belgian Nurses 

Supported. 

Training Center 

Games, comforts, phonograph. 

Children's Colony 

Repairs and furnishings, 
about 20,000 francs. 

Maternity Hospital 

9000 francs for barrack. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing, sewing machine. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital 

Medical supplies, 2000 blankets. 

Soldiers' Club 
Supplies. 

Creche 

Supported. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Through Gifts for Belgian Soldiers 
Comforts. 

Training Center 

Games, comforts, phonograph. 

Villa Job Tuberculosis Sanatorium 
150,000 francs. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing and some furnishings. 
10,000 francs. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing-. 



268 



APPENDIX 



La Chartreuse 
(near Montreuil) 



Landes : 



L'Argentiere : 

Le Glandier 
(Correze) : 

Le Havre: 



Children's Colony 

Clothing supplies. 
Hospital for Children 

Clothing supplies. 
Refuge for Old People 

Supplies, electric lighting, laundry. 

Children's Colony 

Shower baths, clothing, games, 
sewing machine. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 

700 children, entire support. 

Assistance Temporaire 

17,000 francs per month. 
Belgian Village 

600,000 francs. 
Canteen for Dock Laborers 

Financial aid, barrack. 
Civilian Hospital 

Entire support. 
Comite Officiel Beige 

Financial aid, clothing for Vestiaire. 
La Famille de I'Infirmiere 

Entire support. 

Maison de L'Enfance, including, Dispensary, 

Baby Hospital, Baby Temporary Home, 

and a Maternity Hospital. Entire support. 
Military Hospital No. 8 

Recreation barracks — Frs. 38,500 

Special treat of candy and fruit — Frs. 1000. 

Supplies — Frs. 2,254.65. 
CEuvre Havraise des Creches 

Francs 65,000, linens. 
School Children's Belgian Recreation Fund 

6,000 francs. 
Symphonie Militaire Beige 

1,000 francs. 
Syndicat des Travaileuses de V 'Aiguille 

(Crokaert ouvrir) 

Financial aid. 
Yetements du Soldat Reforme 

Monthly grant. 
Invalides, Les 

An institution for reeducation of Belgian 

crippled soldiers. 

For removal to Louvaine, 100,000 francs. 



APPENDIX 



269 



Le Mans: 


Military Hospital 




Food and clothing amounting to 




Frs. 2,218.60. Surgical instruments. 


Le Treport (S. I.) : 


Children's Colony 




Clothing. 


LeVesinet (S. &0.) : 


: Children's Colony 




Clothing. 


Limoges : 


Workshop employing refugees to make cloth- 




ing and shoes for children's colonies. 




Entire support. 


Lisieux (Calvados) : 


Children's Colony 




Clothing. 


Livarot (Calvados) : 


Children's Colony 




Clothing. 


Loiret : 


Refugee Belief 


Lourdes : 


Canteen — aided financially. 




Relief to Refugees. 


Loud un : 


Children's Colony (Abbe" Delforge) 




Clothing and condensed milk. 




Also 500 francs. 


Lumbres : 


British Army Zone Civilian Hospital 




(Mme. Lionville) 




Supplies and financial aid. 


Malo-les-Bains : 


Moving Pictures 


Malaise (S. I.): 


Children's Colony 




Clothing, cow, sewing machine. 


Mareil-en-France 


Agricultural Home for convalescent soldiers 


(S. & 0.): 


Supported. 


Mauleon (Basses 


Children's Colony 


Pyrenees) : 


Supported. 


Merlimont (Pas de 


Children's Colony 


Calais) : 


Clothing. 


Mers-les-Bains 


Children's Colony 


(S. L): 


Clothing. 


Montpellier : 


Military Hospital 




Medical supplies. 




Refugee Committee 




Financial aid. 


Monsoult ( S. & 0. ) : 


Children's Colony 




Clothing. 


Montreuil : 


Civil Hospital 




Clothing. 




Financial Relief to Refugees through Sous- 




Prgfet. 



270 



APPENDIX 



Morteaux-Couliboeuf 
(Calvados) : 

Neuilly (Seine) : 



Nimes : 
Ouville-Abbave : 



Parigne l'Eveque 

(S. D.- 
Paris : 



Petit Couronne 
(S. I.): 

Petite Synthe 
(near Dunkirk) 

Petites Dalles 
(S.I.): 



Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Foyer Ecossais 

Francs— 10,000 

Clothing 

Food. 

Refugee Committee 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing, sewing machine. 

Training Center 

Games, comforts, phonograph. 

Appui Beige 

10,000 francs per month. 
Canteen at Gare du Nord 

Financial aid. 
Two Children's Colonies 

67 Rue de la Sante 

8 Eue de Vouilli 

Clothing. 
Comite Franco-Beige 

Clothing — 5557 francs. 
Conge du Soldat Beige 

2,000 francs in 1917 

9,000 francs monthly in 1918. 
Foyer du Soldat Beige 

8 homes for soldiers' and 2 restaurants. 

All financially aided by Red Cross. 
Hospital du Roi Albert 

Supplies. 
Livre du Soldat Beige 

90,000 francs. 
Roi Albert — Hospital Militaire 

36 beds. 
Foyer — Albert — Elizabeth 

Neuilly, 1000 francs, clothing. 
Canteen Gare du Nord 

10,000 francs. 

Home du Soldat Beige 
Supported. 

Hospital Queen Alexandra 
Supplies, financial aid. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing, sewing machine. 



APPENDIX 



271 



Port Villez, Gare 
Vernon (Enre) : 



Porrville-les- 
Dieppe (S. I.) : 

Preaux (S. I.) : 
Puy ( Pas de Calais ) 

Quimper : 

Recques (Pas de 
Calais) : 

Rinxent-Hydrequent 
(P. de C.) : 

Rouen (S. I.) : 



Rueil (S. & 0.) : 

Soligny La Trappe 
(Orme) : 



Ste. Adresse (Le 
Havre) : 

St. Germain en 
Lave (S. & 0.) : 

St. Illiers-les- 
Bois: 

St. Jacques sous 
Darnetal 

St. Jean (Hesdin) 
(Pas de Calais) : 

St. Lo: 



Institut Militaire des Invalides et Orphelins 
de la Guerre 

Building — 17,500 francs 

Furnishings — 5,000 francs. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing, sewing machine. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing, gifts. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Relief supplies after German retreat. 

Children's Colony 

Barracks, clothing, electric lights. 
All expenses. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Belgian Military Hospital Bonsecours 

Operating table, articles for Pharmacy. 

Dispensaire pour Enfants 
Supported. 

Fonds du Soldat Beige 

Monthly subsidy 2,000 francs from Sep- 
tember, October, November and December 
1918. 

Union Amicale des Refugees Beiges 
2,000 francs. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital for soldiers with mental 

disorders. 

Cinema 

2,500 rancs. 
Gifts for Belgian Soldiers 

Supported. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Boys' Agricultural Colony 

Clothing, shower baths. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Supplies 

Training Center 

Games, comforts, phonograph. 



272 



APPENDIX 



St. Louis de la 
Mulotiere (S. I.) 

St. Lunaire (Ille 
et Vilaine) : 

St. Ouen ( S. & 0. ) : 

St. Paer (S. I.) : 

St. Pol: 

St. Prix: 

St. Vallier 
(Drome) : 

St. Valery-en- 
Caux ( S. I. ) : 

Ste. Aubin Bran- 
ville (S. I.): 

Ste. Aubin Epinay 
(S. I.): 

Ste. Livrade: 

Ste. Marguerite 
Varenge (S. I.) : 

Sablon-St. Livrade 
& Tomebouc: 

Sarcelles (S. & O.) : 

Sassetot : 

Saussay (S. I. ) : 

Sevres ( S. & 0.) : 

Test-Milon, par 
Lain (Yonne) : 

Val Briand 
(Drome) : 
Valmont (S. I.) : 



Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Military Hospital 
Supplies. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Refugee Relief 
Sous-Prefet. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
HStel des Sapins 
Hotel de la Terrasse 
Lavoliere 

Children's Colony 

Food supplies and clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Children's Colony 
Clothing. 

Civilian Hospital 
Supplies. 

Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing:. 



APPENDIX 



273 



Varengeville : 
Versailles (S. &0.) 

Veulettes (S. I.) : 

Villiers-le-Sec : 

Viroflay-le-Pecq 

( S. & 0. ) : 
Wisques (P. de C.) : 

Wizernes (P. de C. ) 



Wormhout (Nord) 
Yvetot (S. I.) : 

London : 



Clothing, sewing machine. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing, sewing machine. 
Military Hospital 

Medical supplies, games. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Food, clothing, and financial aid. 
Children's Colony 

Monthly subsidy 1000 francs for Wisques 

and Wizernes. 

Money for removal of barracks and col- 
onies. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 
Children's Colony 

Clothing. 

ENGLAND. 

Atelier de Taileur, which made clothing for 

Belgian Reformes — 200 pounds. 
California House, 82 Lancaster Gate, Recrea- 
tional and Study Center for Soldiers, 

managed by Miss Julia Heyneman, 1000 

pounds (27,180 francs) and later 5000 

francs. 
Clothing for Belgian Destitute Civilians 

Edmond Carton de Wiart, treasurer, 

200 pounds September, 1918. 
Comite Beige du Travail a Domicile 

27,000 francs for sewing machines, 

January 1918. 
Comite des Visites auoc Blesses Beiges 

5000 francs, March 1918. 
Doctors' and Pharmacists' Fund (Belgian) 

200 pounds per month for four months 

beginning September 1918. 
Relief for Belgians, Prisoners in Germany 

5000 francs, December 1918. 
Volksoureel Belgische — Abbe 

Christophe de Keyser, manager 

200 pounds July 1918. 
Volkhuis (Belgian) Abbe R. Ingelbeen, 

manager, 100 pounds March 1918. 



274 



APPENDIX 



Katwijk-sur-mer : 



Maastricht : 
Teteringen : 

Waspik : 
Goirle : 

The Hague : 



HOLLAND. 

Phalanstere 

Cares for Tuberculosis, Belgian 
Reformes in their homes 
10,000 francs May 1918. 

Croix Mauve (Supervision of Belgian children 
in homes) — 10,000 francs, June 1918. 

Tehuis voor Weezen Verlatene Belgische Kin- 
deren. Work for abandoned children, 
5000 francs June 191S. 

Belgian Soldiers Interned in Holland 

given 1000 pounds monthly from August 
1918 to January 1, 1919, through Belgian 
Central Bureau Prisoners of War at Ste. 
Adresse, France. 

Ecole Beige d'Art Domestique 
2500 francs May 1918. 

Home des Petits Orphelins de la Guerre 

2000 florins. Also 2000 florins to be for- 
warded to Antwerp for "Lait pour les 
Petits" September 1918. 

Ruche, La — To give employment to refugee 
women — 5000 francs, May 1918. 

Sante a VEnfance 

Brought ansemic children from Belgium 
for vacation, 25,000 francs. June 1918. 



Fribourg : 

Leysin : 
Vaulruz : 
Lausanne : 



SWITZERLAND 

Children's Colonies. 

Villa Guinzet 
The New Villa 
Villars les Jones 
Financial aid. 

Colony for tubercular children, 
Financial aid. 

Industrial School 
Financial aid. 

Committee Central Suisse for Refugees 
15,000 francs. 



APPENDIX 275 

APPENDIX VI 

Decorations and Honors given by the King and Queen of the 
Belgians and Belgian Institutions to the personnel of The American 
Red Cross. 

Order of Leopold. 
Commander — Henry P. Davison 
Officer — John van Schaick, Jr. 

Order of the Crown. 
Commander — Ernest P. Bicknell 
Officer — H. R. Fairclough 

Chevalier — Ernest W. Corn 

Leonard Chester Jones 

Ivy L. Lee 

J. Wideman Lee 

Edwards A. Park. 

Order of Leopold II. 
Alfred Worcester. 

Medal of Queen Elisabeth. 
Mrs. Larz Anderson 
Alberte Bicknell 
Constance Bicknell 
Mrs. Ernest P. Bicknell 
Sarah Boyle 
Katharine Cox 
Ethel Damon 
Martha Hoover 
Dr. Alma Rotholz 
Mrs. John van Schaick, Jr. 
Miss Mabel Wilcox 

Medal of the University of Brussels. 
John van Schaick, Jr. 

Honorary Degree, Doctor of Medicine, 
University of Liege. 
John van Schaick, Jr. 



INDEX 



Abbeville, 10, 17, 18. 
Accounting, 5, 13, 55. 
Adinkerke, 32, 59, 74. 
Advanced Surgical Stations, 74. 
Aide Civile Beige, 109. 
Albert, Corporal, 255. 
Albert, King Albert, 13, 23, 24, 

29, 37, 38, 39, 71, 74, 206, 207, 

209, 215, 236, 241, 245. 
Ambulance de l'Ocean. See 

Ocean Hospital. 
Ambulance Units, American, 244. 
American Army, 50, 241. 
American Red Cross. See Red 

Cross. 
American Relief Clearing House, 

2, 6. 
Appropriations, 251. 
Appui Beige, 146. 
Armistice, News of, 211. 
Assistance Discrete, 219. 
Assistance Temporaire, 99. 
Authorities, Joint Action of, 90. 
Aviators, American, 241, 242. 

Babies, Work for, 12, 177, 180. 

Baetens, Work of Madame, 219, 
255. 

Bassompierre, Madame, 51. 

Battle of the Mountain of Flan- 
ders, 72. 

Battle of Ypres-Armentieres, 89. 

Beatty, H. O., 7. 

Belgian Army Hospitals, 77. 

Belgian Decorations, 275. 

Belgian Government, 9, 11, 16, 
22, 103, 145. 

Belgian People, 60, 247. 

Belgian Red Cross. See Red 
Cross. 

Belgian Soldiers, Hardships of, 
143. 



Belgians, Fighting Ability, 72, 
73, 199, 243. 

Belgium, Free, 7, 11, 30, 31. 

Belgium, Occupied, 6, 217, 232. 

Berryer, Paul, 7, 9, 10, 14, 56, 
95, 98, 153, 200, 223, 246, 253. 

Beveren, 31, 77. 

Bombing, 34, 57, 109, 117, 119, 
121, 173. 

Bercail, Le, 223. 

Bicknell, Ernest P. Col., 2, 3, 4, 
6, 7, 12, 34, 54, 55, 58, 61, 70, 
71, 97, 158, 161, 171, 275. 

Bicknell, Mrs. Ernest P., 46, 47, 
51, 99, 275. 

Bicknell, Constance, 46, 139, 275. 

Bicknell, Alberte, 46, 139, 275. 

Biebuyck, Albert, 11, 135. 

Boitshoucke, Children at, 111. 

Bourbourg, Hospital, 77. 

Boy Scouts, 222. 

Braekers, J., 255. 

British Gifts for Belgian Sol- 
diers, 147. 

British Monitors, 35. 

British Attitude to Civilians, 92. 

British Red Cross Society, 71, 91, 
165. 

British Army, 31. 

Bruges, 49, 74. 

Bruges, Entry of King, 207. 

Bruges, Headquarters at, 206, 
208. 

Brunet, Minister, 146, 246. 

Brussels, 45, 49, 213, 215. 

Brussels, Liberation of, 214. 

Budgets, 49. 

Buying, 13, 55. 



Cabour, Hospital, 59, 77. 
Calais, 5, 10, 77, 109. 
Cadbury, L. J., 256. 



277 



278 



INDEX 



Calmette, Dr., On Tuberculosis, 

188. 
Camions. See Transportation. 
Cannes Conference, 188. 
Canteens, 142, 146, 148, 251. 
Carton de Wiart, Count Henry, 

20. 
Carton de Wiart, Countess 

Henry, 9, 10, 12, 98, 117, 124, 

126, 130, 133, 193, 254. 
Cassel, 88. 

Catholic Party, 9, 17, 104. 
Caudebee, 8. 

Centers of Recreation, 146, 149. 
Child Saving, 102, 112, 137, 222, 

223, 224, 251. 
Children, From Occupied Coun- 
try, 133, 137. 
Children, Under Fire, 111, 116, 

122, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 

136. 
Children's Colonies, 7, 8, 9, 102. 
Children's Colonies at Front, 110, 

136. 
Children's Colonies of the Queen, 

136. 
Children's Dugout, 112. 
Citations for Red Cross Medals, 

253. 
Civil Hospitals, 78, 151, 220, 251. 
Civil Hospitals, French, 151, 154. 
Civilians in Army Areas, 11, 12, 

32, 92, 115, 151. 
Civilians Mutilated, 197. 
Claes, Professor Ernest, 95, 256. 
Clark, Dr. Hilda, 159. 
Clemenceau, 37, 44. 
Closing Up, 246. 
Commission to Europe, 1, 46. 
Comite National, 6, 49, 186. 

203, 218. 
Comitg Officiel Beige, 95, 98. 
Conge du Soldat Beige, 146. 
Congestion, 18, 93, 99. 
Cooperation with Belgians, 14, 

54. 
Corn, Captain Ernest W., 47, 95, 

97, 206, 275. 
Corner Never Conquered, The, 7, 

11, 30, 31, 135. 



Courtrai, Hospital at, 175. 
Cows, 8, 72, 76, 105, 118. 
Coxyde, Civil Hospital, 78. 
C. R. B., 218, 236. 
Creche Nord Est, 223. 
Creche Beige, 223. 

Daly, R. J., 4. 
Damon, Ethel, 47, 275. 
Davison, Henry P., 50, 162, 206, 

209, 210, 246, 275. 
De Broqueville, Baron, 18, 19, 

146. 
Decentralized Government, 103. 
De Ceuninck, General, 17, 77, 

246. 
Decorations, 206, 209, 275. 
Delaere, Abbe, 106, 120. 
Delrez, Dr. Louis, 230. 
De Mot, Madame Jean, 51, 65, 

225. 
Depage, Dr. A., 34, 62, 64, 70, 73, 

75, 135, 191, 196, 206, 248, 253. 
Depage, Marie, 63. 
Department of Social and Eco- 
nomic Conditions, 7, 161. 
Department for Belgium, 13, 15. 
Derache, Dr., 78. 
D'leteren, Madame Gabrielle, 

256. 
Doctors, Scarcity of, 152. 
Dressmaker, Story of, 210. 
Duclot, Lieutenant, 256. 
Dunkirk, 10, 57, 111, 165, 167, 

241. 
d'Ursel, Countess Louise, 221. 

Education in Belgium, 104, 137. 
Educational Value of the Work, 

181. 
Elizabeth, Queen of the Belgians, 

37, 38, 39, 62, 71, 74, 78, 135, 

186, 190, 201, 206, 216, 225, 

253. 
El Paso Chapter, Work of, 105, 

113. 
Empain, Senator, 103. 
Endicott, William, 4. 
Enfants du Peuple, 223. 
Enfants Martyrs, 223. 



INDEX 



279 



England, Work in, 7, 197, 273. 
Entry of King, 207, 215. 

Famille du Soldat Beige, 98. 
Farm, Belgian Red Cross, 72, 76. 
Far rand, Dr. Livingston, 6, 184, 

187. 
Fear, Effect on Children, 110, 

121, 123. 
Fighting Men, Work for, 140. 
Feeding, Training in, 181. 
Flanders, 11, 23, 30, 31. 
Flower Gardens, 43, 136. 
Folks, Homer, 6, 83, 102, 162. 
Fonds du Roi Albert, 99, 100. 
Food Supplies, 61, 174, 203, 212. 
Foyer du Soldat Beige, 146. 
Foyer des Orphelins, 223. 
France, Work in, 265. 
Francqui, Emile, '186. 218. 
Freeman, Dr. Rowland G., 104, 

180. 
French Army, 31. 
French Civilians, 159. 
French Generosity, 94. 
French Red Cross Society. See 

Red Cross. 
French, Sir John, 24. 
French, Red Cross, 71. 
Friends' Ambulance Unit, 57, 61, 

90, 154, 157, 165. 
Friends, American, 2. 162. 
Friends, English, 160, 161. 
Friends, War Victims Relief 

Committee, 4, 157. 
Frontier, Escaping Over, 229. 
Frv, Marjorie, 159. 
Furnes, 11, 12, 77, 110. 
Fyffe, Georgia, 102, 112, 135. 

Gas Victims, 175. 
German Advance, 87, 88. 
German Graves in France, 161. 
Germans, Contact with the, 213. 
Ghent, Work for, 224. 
Ghent, Liberation of, 211. 
Gibson, Colonel Harvev D.. 200, 

209, 246. 
Gifts for Belgian Soldier?, 74, 

79, 146, 147. 



Glaenzer, Mademoiselle, 146, 147. 
Goblet, d'Alviella, Count, 19, 95. 
Goblet, d'Alviella, Countess, 51. 
Goblet, Countess Hel&ne, 20, 51. 
Gratitude of Belgians, 246. 
Graux, Captain Charles, 66, 138, 

208, 223, 257. 
Guest, Mrs. Haden, 102, 139. 
Gummere, Lieutenant John W., 

48, 60, 215. 

Hanssens, Maurice, 66, 69. 
Headquarters, 46. 
Heger, Dr. Paul, 229, 246. 
Helleputte, Minister, 19, 95, 194, 

246, 257. 
Helleputte, Madame Louise, 98. 
Holemans, Dr., 224. 
Holland, Work in, 7, 274. 
Hoogstade, Hospital of, 31, 77. 
Hoover, Herbert, 6, 21, 82, 102, 

137, 161, 177, 186, 212, 218, 

246. 
Hopyards, 37. 
Hopital Alexandra, 153. 154, 

169, 172. 
HSpital Elizabeth, 32. 
Hospitals, Welfare Work, 4, 43, 

51, 79, 225. 
Hospitals, Work for, 62, 74, 79, 

151. 
Housing, Problem of, 99, 220. 
Housing of Soldiers, 145. 
Houthem, 31. 
Houthulst Forest, 72, 74, 79, 

148, 199. 

Hunt, Edward Eyre, 7. 
Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, 177. 
Hymans, Paul, 19, 199. 
Hymans, Madame Paul, 51, 146, 

149, 225, 253. 

Iseghem, Liberation of, 203. 

Janssen, Dr. Carl, 202, 213. 
Jones, Captain Leonard Chester, 

47, 275. 
Jones, Rufus M., 162, 164. 
Jonlet, Dr., 257. 
Joostens, Madame, 72. 



280 



INDEX 



Journalists, Needy Belgian, 218. 

Kemmel, Mt., 89, 243. 
King Albert. See Albert. 
Knox, Dr. J. H. Mason, 178. 

Lace Makers, 221. 

La Calvaire, Cancer Work of, 

220. 
La Chartreuse, Belgian Kefuge 

at, 119, 155, 209, 258. 
Lambert, Alexander, Dr., 15, 68. 
La Panne, 5, 7, 11, 12, 30, 31, 

34, 36, 58, 63, 148, 201, 202, 

206, 208, 209. 

League of Red Cross Societies, 

188, 190. 
Lee, Major Ivy L., 50, 275. 
Lee, Major J. Wideman, 47, 71, 

75, 206, 207, 275. 
Leeds, Morris, 2, 158. 
Le Glandier, Queen's Colony at, 

138. 
Le Havre, 5, 7, 8, 10, 16, 18, 46, 

56, 75, 93, 99, 178, 236. 
Le Havre, Belgian Military Hos- 
pital at, 51, 77. 
Les Petites Roses de la Reine, 

222. 
Leysele, Children's Colony at, 

110. 
Leysele, Hospital of, 153. 
Liberal Party, 17, 104. 
Liberated Areas, 91, 174, 203, 

207, 211. 
Library Service, 148. 
Liege, Work for, 223. 

Life Under German Rule, 10, 

127, 133. 
Livre du Soldat Beige, 148. 
Looking Ahead, 56, 76. 

Maes, M. Jean, 57. 
Malaise, Colony of, 8. 
Masson, Story of Minister, 226. 
Maternity Hospitals, 153, 154, 

179. 
Max, Burgomaster, 214, 228, 237. 
McCullough, Major Ernest, 4, 

158. 



Medals, Belgian, 275. 
Medals, Red Cross, 230, 253. 
Medical Education, 229. 
Melis, General, 66, 70, 77, 78, 

190, 206, 254. 
Mercier, Cardinal, 228, 232, 254. 
Military Relief, Cost of, 251. 
Militarization of Red Cross, 66. 
Moral Value of Free Belgium, 

135. 
Mordey, Major W., 58, 109, 170, 

175, 258. 
Mulvey, Lieut. Francis de Sales, 

46. 
Munition Workers, 112, 142. 
Murphy, Colonel Grayson M. P., 

1, 3, 13, 162. 
Mutilated, The, 192. 

Newman, Sir George, 165, 168. 
Nieuport, 25, 26, 30, 44. 
Ninety-first Division, 244. 
Nolf, Colonel Pierre, 58, 78, 135. 

231 258. 
Nuns,' 8, 12, 62, 106, 109, 115, 

155, 175. 
Nurse's Aids, 52, 65, 73, 156. 
Nurses' Home, 225. 

Ocean Hospital, 32, 58, 62, 142, 

202, 241. 
Olbrecht, M., 8, 9, 103. 
Osborne, Major, C. G., 4, 5. 
Osborne, Mrs. John Ball, 51. 
Ostend, Entry Into, 206. 
Ouville l'Abbaye, Colony at, 8. 

Paris Office, A. R. C, 13, 51, 59, 

74, 91, 143, 176, 241. 
Park, Major Edwards A., 47, 73, 

139, 155, 177. 
Perkins, Colonel Jas. H., 4, 50, 

71. 
Personnel, Names of, 249, 250. 
Personnel, Scarcity of, 46, 153, 

156. 
Pierce, Major Daniel T., 71. 
Poullet, Minister, 19. 
Poupaert, Private, 258. 
Places Helped, List of, 260. 



INDEX 



281 



Policies. See American Ked 

Cross. 
Poperinghe, 37, 91, 174. 
Port Villez, School of, 194. 
Principles of Relief Work, 2, 3, 

13, 14, 17, 54. 
Principles of Tuberculosis Work, 

187. 
Prisoners of War, Return of, 226. 

Quakers. See Friends. 

Quaker Foundations for Our 
Work, 157. 

Queen of the Belgians. See Eliz- 
abeth. 

Queen's Purse, 135. 

Railheads, Work at, 86, 90, 91, 

174. 
Ramsey, Dr., 178; 
Recques, Children's Colony of, 

109, 209. 
Red Cross, Belgian, 65, 66, 69, 

70, 76, 78, 197, 224. 
R«d Cross Policy, American, 3, 

83, 86, 97, 141, 224, 247. 
Reeducation of Mutilated, 192. 
Refugees, The Military Problem 

of, 83, 84, 151. 
Refugees, From Occupied Coun- 
try, 91. 
Refugees, General Discussion of, 

81, 97. 
Refugees, In Exile, 93. 
Refugees, Policy in Handling, 98. 
Refugees, In Flight, 85. 
Refugees, Appropriations for, 

251. 
Renkin, Jules, 20. 
Renkin, Madame Jules, 51. 
Retreat, Great German, 202. 
Rhineland, Life in the, 150. 
Rockefeller Foundation, 2, 6, 

184, 187, 229. 
Rolin Hvmans, Madame, 112, 

257. 
Roscam, Dr. Jacques, 230, 259. 
Rotholz, Dr. Alma, 73, 139. 
Rouen, 8, 178, 196. 
Rousbrugge, 31, 90, 153. 



Rucquoy, General, 32, 111, 236. 
Rupprecht, Crown Prince, 26, 29. 

Ste. Adresse, 7, 9, 16, 194. 

Salle Franklin, The, 179. 

Saussay, Colony of, 8. 

Scattergood, Henry, 2, 158, 162. 

Schoolmaster, Story of, 205. 

School Teachers, Destitute Pub- 
lic, 225. 

Seaplane Base, American, 241. 

Secours Urgent, 221. 

Secours aux Infortunes, 219. 

Self Respect, Belgian, 21, 246. 

Service de Sante, Belgian, 66, 70. 

Sewing Machines, 106, 115, 118. 

Shelling, 34, 201. 

Sites, Difficulty in Getting, 59. 

Smith, Capt. Philip Horton, 47, 
59. 

Socialist Party, 17, 104, 141. 

Soldier Welfare Work, 140. 

Spectacle of War, 34, 64, 158. 

Speed Necessary, 75. 

Steyaert, Jean, 11, 110, 135, 259. 

Stoefs, Corporal, 148, 258. 

Stores. See Warehouses. 

Stories about Children, 113. 

Stories by Children, 124. 

Students in Army, 148, 229. 

Supplies for Hospitals, 79. 

Supplies from United States, 74. 

Surgery, Remarkable, 230. 

Switzerland, Work in, 274. 

Tatham, Captain Meaburn, 170, 

173, 259. 
Taylor, Major Carl, 4, 5. 
Tents, 74, 147. 
Termonde, Housing for, 220. 
Thielt, Civil Hospital of, 220. 
Thirtieth Division, The, 243. 
Thirty-seventh Division, The, 

244. 
Toys, 12, 13, 105. 
Transportation, 13, 55, 75, 90, 

171. 
Trenches, German, 202. 
Tributes to Work, 247. 



282 



INDEX 



Tuberculosis, 76, 152, 154, 184, 

226. 
Twenty- seventh Division, The, 

243. 
Typhoid, 111, 152, 177. 

Universities, Eeopening of, 228. 

Van den Steen, Countess, 120, 

153, 201, 221, 223. 
Vandervelde, Emile, 17, 74, 98, 

141, 146, 199, 206, 211, 213, 

223, 246, 254. 
Vandevyvere, A., Minister of 

Finance, 14, 21, 56, 199, 202, 

220. 
van Schaick, John Jr., 4, 275. 
van Schaick, Mrs. John Jr., 4, 

51, 131, 275. 
Vincent, Remy, 260. 



Vinckem, Hospital of, 31, 72. 
Village for Refugees, 99. 
Vital Statistics, 252. 
von Bisthoven, Janssens, 11, 207. 

Wadsworth, Eliot, 50. 
War Council, The, 13, 143. 
Warehouses, 12, 57, 60, 74, 89, 

174. 
Welfare Organizations, The, 141. 
Whitlock, Brand, 9, 10, 21, 23, 

235. 
Whitlock, Mrs. Brand, 51, 236. 
Wilcox, Mabel, 47, 179, 275. 
Willems, Dr., 78. 
Wisques, Chateau of, 106. 
Wizernes, Colony of, 106. 

Yser, Battle of, 23. 

Ypres, 31, 37, 89, 106, 107, 131. 



iSf?AftV OF 

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